Clarks: Made to Last

by Mark Palmer

  And when two directors returned from a tour of America in 1936 they concluded that:

  … women of all classes are better dressed than in England … they are more smartly turned out, and this does not only apply to paint and lipstick, but also to clothes and shoes.

  Bancroft Clark made a robust defence of the board’s enthusiasm for foreign travel. In November 1928 – the year he became a director – he said:

  Why send people to America? The trip will cost the firm at least £300 – enough to pay two days workers’ wages for a year. And what will there be to show for it? We go primarily to see shoe factories, to see new machines, new methods … such things we hope to learn and bring back home to imitate or adapt for our purposes … so send them [managers] away, tell them to look at other people’s ways and learn to improve their own, give them the opportunity to broaden their minds.

  Members of the board travelled closer to home as well. A visit to the Norwich factory of Sexton, Son & Everard in 1935 offered the chance to inspect an innovative, albeit complicated, conveyor system in the making and finishing departments. As Kenneth Hudson wrote in Towards Precision Shoemaking:

  This conveyor was laid out in short units, each conveying a sequence of operations, and between the different units there were storage fixtures which acted as safely valves and prevented congestion on the conveyor itself. These same fixtures were used for drying finished work, so that the time the trays spent on them was not wasted.

  John Fox (at left), an 82-year-old shoemaker, was presented with a £5 gift from Clarks in December 1937 in appreciation of his long service. He had been an outworker for 73 years, since the age of nine. Frank Clark (at right) made the presentation in Number One office.

  C. & J. Clark’s willingness to embrace new technology had been a hallmark of its formative days and remained just as strong 100 years later. The emergence of rubber soles was becoming more widespread and it was C. & J. Clark which developed something called ‘pussyfoot soling’, which gave shoes more springy, spongy soles than was possible with ordinary hardened rubber. Such was the popularity of rubber soles and heels that by 1941 the company’s rubber department had doubled in size.

  The hugely profitable ‘Joyance Sandal’ had been introduced by C. & J. Clark in 1933. It had a crepe rubber sole – which ‘Won’t slip on polished floors’ as a showcard said – and a Hawthorne red grain leather upper, and it was relatively cheap to produce because it was Veldt sewn or ‘stitch down’, as this was known. A year later, C. & J. Clark pushed into production the men’s ‘Jersey Sandal’ in brown, which was also Veldt sewn, but had leather soles. ‘Give your feet a holiday’ said the showcard, which portrayed a man leaning against a wooden fence, stick in hand, pipe in mouth and accompanied by a loyal dog staring lovingly up at him. ‘Men’s sandals for country rambles, summer golf – the seaside, yachting, river wear …’ said the copy.

  By 1937, signs of recovery were wafting through the economy – and for the first time in many years C. & J. Clark’s employees were asked to work overtime. There was good news, too, at C. & J. Clark’s sister company, the Avalon Leather Board Company at Bowlingreen Mill, which made stiffeners for shoemaking. A dramatic restructuring, combined with the introduction of a new stiffener and insole board, had resulted in a celebrated turnaround. Ever since its founding by William S. Clark in 1877, the Avalon Leather Board Company had been run independently from C. & J. Clark, but by 1921 turnover had fallen to £26,671, making it impossible to justify employing its own sales force and so it relied instead on outside agents. Roger Clark took over as chairman of the Avalon Leather Board Company on his father’s death in 1925, but day-to-day management was in the hands of Joseph (Joe) Ward, a Congregationalist, dedicated teetotaller and supposedly a confirmed bachelor until he astonished everyone by announcing at the end of the First World War that he was marrying a fellow member of his church. He was 55 on his wedding day.

  By the time Ward died in 1931, the Avalon Leather Board Company had a workforce of some 77, including ten women and six administrative staff. At a board meeting on 28 March 1931, the directors put their appreciation of Ward on record:

  The Mill has always been his [Ward’s] first interest and has benefited during all these years from his faithful and devoted service and his very considerable ability.

  The Central Somerset Gazette noted his ‘wonderful tact and discretion in preventing friction – his very presence in a group tended to ensure harmony and good fellowship’. Promoted to production manager to take over the running of the factory was the 23-year-old Bryan Morland, grandson of John Morland, who had married James Clark’s daughter, Mary, and who was a partner in the rug-making company, Clark, Son & Morland.

  The Avalon Leather Board Company was in profit – but only just. Shoemakers increasingly were buying cheaper stiffeners from the continent and because ladies’ shoes were now made of softer leather, they required softer stiffeners. If the Avalon Leather Board Company was to survive, it needed help. Fortunately, Bancroft had, like his father, Roger, a foot in both camps and saw the need to establish closer formal ties between the Avalon Leather Board Company and C. & J. Clark Ltd.

  ‘We scarcely get orders enough to work the Mill half time,’ wrote Roger Clark in September 1932. But Roger and Bancroft were determined to keep the business going. At one point, Roger praised Morland for the ‘energy and interest you are throwing into your work’ and referred back to the dark days of 1863 when William S. Clark saved the shoe company from bankruptcy. ‘He [William] pulled through all right and we confidently expect you will be equally successful in your job.’

  The Avalon Leather Board Company did pull through, but not without the help of £5,000 from C. & J. Clark to invest in new equipment. In addition, the shoemaking business placed a regular order of some 12,000 pairs of stiffeners a week, with the proviso that they be made and delivered within seven days. Even so, Morland grew increasingly despondent about the future of the Avalon Leather Board Company and finally tendered his resignation in November 1935 after only four years in the post as production manager.

  Stephen Clark, Bancroft’s younger brother by eleven years, took over, aged 21, and set out to make a stiffener and insole board that met C. & J. Clark’s exact requirements under a new trade name of Springbok. It took time, but Springbok was a significant breakthrough in its use of a combination of rope and paper, with additional chrome leather shavings mixed with latex and animal and vegetable oil. It was a big success. The Avalon Leather Board Company made a net profit approaching £1,500 in the year ending 31 March 1938, rising to more than £20,000 in the year ending 31 March 1943.

  This family group, the descendants of William Stephens and Helen Priestman Bright Clark living in Street, was photographed at Whitenights, Roger and Sarah Clark’s home outside Street, on 24 April 1937, shortly before Stephen Clark went to work in the USA. Standing, left to right: Tony Clark, Roger Clark, Peter Clothier, Stephen Clark, Cato Clark, Nathan Clark, Eleanor Clark, Bancroft Clark, Jan Clark, Priscilla Clark. Front row, seated, left to right: Mary Clark, Caroline Clark, Sarah Clark, Goldie the cat, Cyrus Clark, Violet Clothier, Anthony Clothier, Daniel Clark, Eileen Clark, Lance Clark.

  Stephen had joined the Avalon Leather Board Company after coming down from Cambridge University, but in May 1937 – after a short period driving an ambulance during the Spanish Civil War – he left to work at Joseph Bancroft & Son in the USA, which was owned by his mother’s family. He was recalled to Street in 1941 and given back his old job, by which time the Avalon Leather Board Company had become a subsidiary of C. & J. Clark Ltd, thus giving the parent company full control of it.

  Stephen was quick to credit Bancroft for the Avalon Leather Board Company’s’s resurgence. In 1947, he wrote:

  It would be correct to say that Avalon as it is, is his [Bancroft’s] creation. No, it would be better to say that he is the goose that laid the egg that the rest of us have hatched.

  In his history of Bowlingreen Mill – the headqu
arters of the Avalon Leather Board Company – Michael McGarvie also singled out Bancroft for his contribution:

  He was until after the Second World War a decisive influence, stimulating the management, putting forward his own ideas, supporting those of others, throwing down opposition, chivvying the slow and blasting the inefficient. By pursuing a policy of ‘the market needs this, let’s try to make it’, he became one of the architects of Avalon’s revival.

  The single word Clarks (with no apostrophe) began to be used by the company in the 1920s and was registered as a trademark – something to which a firm called Clarks of Kilmarnock, in Scotland, initially took exception. Slowly, Clarks took over as the brand name from Tor. The suggestion to depict the word Clarks in handwritten style came from Bostock, but it was Bancroft who came up with the overall design of the logo, even though he was not clear when exactly it was created.

  As Bancroft said in a note written in 1981 to Judith Dempster, curator of the Clarks museum:

  In the early or middle 1930s there was an International Exhibition in Paris to which I went … Apart from seeing the Exhibition I was in my hotel bedroom drawing out trial runs of the word Clarks. This used the ‘C’ as written by Hugh Clark and the rest of the word as I thought I should like to write it myself. It was not, of course, a signature but a work of art!

  Hugh Clark was especially involved with the company’s first national advertising campaign in 1933, in which Clarks sandals took centre stage. Until then, the company’s main method of publicising its wares had been through catalogues to the trade and its showcards. One of the first high-profile artists commissioned by the company to develop the brand was the American-born and highly regarded Edward McKnight Kauffer, whose work is much sought after today. After studying at the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art in San Francisco, Kauffer was sponsored to further his training in Paris, to where he moved as a young man, enrolling at the Académie Moderne. He relocated to London in 1915, where he had a chance meeting with Frank Pick, head of publicity for London Underground Electric Railways.

  This led to Kauffer producing more than 140 posters for the London Underground. Known for his Cubism and Vorticism, Kauffer’s output was prolific. For C. & J. Clark, he designed five showcards in the 1920s. One of them, for children’s sandals, had a surrealist edge to it, with an open door, leading to green fields and blue skies. The caption read: ‘EVERYWHEN for indoor and outdoor wear’.

  The 1933 sandals advertisement was restrained, simply showing the shoe, accompanied by the strap-line: ‘Sandals for summer’ followed by a brief, somewhat leaden description of the benefits of owning a pair. It appeared first in the Radio Times, followed by Health for All and Sunday Pictorial, which had a circulation of 1.7 million. A year later, the board agreed to spend a further £350 to advertise in Britannia, Sketch, and Sporting and Dramatic. Then, in 1935, Bancroft persuaded the board to increase production of children’s shoes to allow for a projected 50 per cent increase in sales, with an agreement to spend 2 per cent of turnover on advertising.

  A year later saw the West End production of Charles B. Cochran’s revue, Follow the Sun, featuring the chorus line known as ‘Mr Cochran’s Young Ladies’, comprising 24 glamorous, happy and – for those days – scantily-clad women, all wearing C. & J. Clark’s ‘Colorado’ sandals, intimating to consumers (and theatre-goers) that Clarks was a brand of the moment.

  One of Edward McKnight Kauffer’s iconic 1920s showcards, for Tor sheepskin slippers.

  Cecil Notley was brought in to work on advertising and publicity in 1937, the year advertisements were placed in Vogue for the first time. Three insertions also ran in the Daily Express with the strapline: ‘Selling the name of Clarks’. The board was now fully committed to advertising and, despite rationing and a shortage of some raw materials during the Second World War, it agreed to ‘keep our name before the public as one of the leading firms in the shoe trade’.

  Notley, supported strongly by Hugh Clark, whose official title was sales director, embraced this plan with a flourish, pushing for celebrity associations with Clarks whenever he could. Some 40 actresses were commandeered to wear Clarks and, more important, be seen to be wearing Clarks.

  ‘In the lead of films and fashion – charming Ann Todd wearing Clarks shoes’ said one advertisement, showing the actress perched decoratively on a window seat, her long, bare legs dangling before her. Margaret Lockwood and Anna Neagle launched ranges of Gatwick Boots, Mendip, Norwegian Lace and several wooden-sole shoes. The advertisement featuring Neagle showed her dressed in her role in Jane Austen’s Emma, sporting a pair of replica 1845 shoes ‘as worn by the fashionable ladies of the period … fashions have changed but still today Clarks shoes are the choice of well-dressed women’. Dolores Gray was photographed wearing a pair of Clippers as she stood on the step of a steam-train engine looking fondly into the eyes of the driver. And Bebe Daniels was pictured wearing a special pair of wood-soled sandals on the set of the 1944 musical Panama Hattie. The photograph of Daniels was taken at the Piccadilly Theatre by John Hinde, son of the Clarks director, Wilfrid Hinde, and at first caused some consternation when the actress was shown drinking a glass of red wine. Teetotaller Roger Clark disapproved. In response, Hugh Clark suggested ‘changing the colour of the liquid to orange’, but noted that ‘even Mr Roger Clark knows that orange juice is sometimes mixed with gin!’ A compromise was reached when Daniels was shown enjoying an ice cream soda with two straws sticking out of it.

  One of C. B. Cochran’s glamorous ‘Young Ladies’ (Kitty Glen, later Mrs John Powell) in 1936 – wearing Clarks sandals, naturally.

  The Western Temperance League holding its centenary lunch in the Crispin Hall, Street, in 1935.

  The whole cast of Panama Hattie took to wearing Clarks, with the company keen to stress that a three-hour show of that kind required the very best footwear. Daniels’s shoes in the advertisement were red and appeared in Vogue, but, unfortunately, the show itself was taken off after 300 performances because of bomb damage to the theatre. Happily, it then went on tour, in effect showing the shoes to audiences all over the country. Advertising expenditure amounted to £13,487 in 1939, increasing to £30,581 by 1946 and £53,579 in 1948, some £1.5 million in today’s money.

  C. & J. Clark had a good war. Regulations on shoe manufacturing during the Second World War were extensive and included leather and footwear rationing and price controls, but the company would emerge largely unscathed. The wartime coalition government introduced a system of ‘utility footwear’ whereby 50 per cent of a manufacturer’s civilian shoes had to be low-price and would be exempt from purchase tax in order that people on low incomes could still afford to be properly shod.

  The rationing of upper leather saw the company move swiftly to find an alternative. In 1939, the board announced:

  We shall reconsider all existing designs with a view to cutting down the amount of leather used. Celluloid will be substituted for all leather heel covers. Leather piping and trimmings will be left off all shoes and, generally speaking, we shall withdraw or redesign all shoes which use more than 1¾ feet per pair.

  C. & J. Clark was designated by the Board of Trade a ‘nucleus firm’, making it less likely that its workforce would be called up. It also meant the company had government contracts, in particular providing footwear to the Auxiliary Territorial Service and the RAF, including, in the case of the latter, flying boots. Another sideline was the rebuilding of worn American army boots, undertaken on behalf of the Ministry of Supply. Some 2,000 American lasts were sent over to Street for this purpose and between 1943 and the end of 1944, 180,000 pairs were taken apart and welted with rubber soles and heels. American servicemen reportedly said the reassembled models were more comfortable than the originals. C. & J. Clark also made thousands of ‘Mae West’ lifejackets as part of the war effort.

  In August 1940, C. & J. Clark signed a contract with the Bristol Aeroplane Company to make parts for Hercules engines and for Lancasters, Stirlings, Wellingtons, Ha
lifaxes and other planes. During the summer of 1941, the factory’s Big Room took on a new look when the Admiralty arranged for Whiteheads, a machine-tool firm in Weymouth, to move in and begin making torpedo parts, a development that might have been hard to accept for those with acute Quaker sensibilities.

  During the war, in keeping with the Peace Testimony issued by Quaker founder George Fox in 1661 (which committed the Society of Friends to pacifism and non-violence), many Quakers became conscientious objectors and pushed for a negotiated settlement. Others gave reluctant support to the war effort. Among the latter group was Roger Clark, who appeared to have little time for the appeasement argument. On 30 September 1938, he wrote in his diary:

  As I supposed, [Neville] Chamberlain and [Edouard] Daladier [the French prime minister at the start of the war] have given everything – practically – away in face of the intimidation of Hitler, aided by Mussolini; I expect Spain also has been handed over to the latter. Chamberlain has shown himself to be a most incompetent negotiator; he seems to have got nothing whatever in return for what he has given away with both hands. Of course one must be thankful not to have war, but I can’t join in praise of Chamberlain for buying off at the Czechs’ expense.