Textile Insight

and the $140 Chelsea-style Romeo ($135 in soft toe). All the USA- made styles have a heat-, oil- and slip-resistant rubber outsole rated to 572 degrees, and an angled heel designed to keep the wearer stable during ladder work. Skilling convened a panel of women in the trades at Keen's global sales meeting last November. The goal, she says, was to give some of the brand's retail customers the same insight into the challenges these women face on the job, what they're looking for and how often they aren't finding it when they're shopping their stores. And on the product front, a continuing aim is expanding the line to fit a broader range of working women. "We've nailed light and medium duty, and we're bridging into heavy duty." Women who are heavy metal fabricators or big machinery operators, she says, need full-foot protection that shields the metatarsals and resists puncture to keep them safe on the job. "We're making sure we have a true light-to-heavy range so we can be a true safety partner for women and men." A Positive Response "Women's has been on the top of my list since I joined the brand four years ago," says Timberland Pro's Ashe. "One of the things I noticed right away from our assortment — as well as from our competitors — was the lack of women's specific product. Brands would shrink down their boots into women's sizing and retailers would have a small space on the wall. That seems like it's underserving a large population that we saw through our data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics." To get their arms around what needed to be different, Ashe and his team (the firm hired a female designer to serve the cat- egory) went on the road. "We set on a pretty ambitious travel from coast to coast to talk to our consumers and found out there were four key charac- teristics no matter where she lived: comfort, fit, aesthetics and price. And maybe sometimes they were in a different order, but those were the four. So we set out to reestablish what a women's work boot would be." The first result was the women's Hightower series, which debuted with a 6-inch boot in 2017. Built to the same technical and protective specs as the existing men's product, the team consulted SATRA studies on women's feet to create a last with a narrower heel that locks the foot in place, and a pattern that can be laced to accommodate a higher arch or wider foot as comfortably as a narrower one. Since expanded to include an 8-inch and Chelsea boot style, for Fall '19, the brand is launching versions with both 200g and 400g of insulation. As with previ- ous iterations, the leathers and detailing are consistent with the men's line, a detail Ashe says was important to the women they surveyed. "In a rough and tough environment, they don't want to stand out; they want to show they are confident in their work and skill." Across the market, women's is somewhere between 8 to 10 percent of industrial footwear sales, and is about 10 percent of the brand's work business, according to Ashe. But the retailers Timberland has partnered with on the shoes have seen their bottom lines increase and the women's share rise to 10 to 12 percent. "We're coming up on a year of the shoes being in the market and we are beyond happy with the reception that consumers have given them, and with the retailers' backup orders and sales data," Ashe says. "We had the figures and facts to show there was a movement in place, and that with the skills gaps and trade gap, a lot of the trades were recruiting heavily and targeting women. We told them, 'you may not feel you have this customer,' but we do." l 24 • Textile Insight ~ January/February 2019 textileinsight.com Wolverine's I-90 Chelsea boots have CarbonMax safety toes and removable EPX antifatigue footbeds. FOOTWEAR | WORK BOOTS w w w . s u p e r d r y e r s . c o m MOLD? MOISTURE DAMAGE? AVAILABLE WORLDWIDE No Silica gel Captures and Isolates Moisture in excess of 200-450% of its dry weight Prevention is better than cure No clay No BIOCIDES Michael H anrahan > > micha el@ superdryers.com (201) 679 4703 Steve R y an > > steve@ superdryers.com (312) 371 5438 Alex Chisholm > > alex@superdryamericas.com (904) 210 8602 For orders in the Americas :

• Cover