Footwear Insight

O le Beck wanted to get out of the shoe business so badly he moved across an ocean. Luckily for the shoppers of California's Bay Area, it didn't stick. Beck, son of a cobbler and the descendent of gen- erations of cobblers, left Denmark in 1917 to start a new life in America — one that wasn't dedicated to shoemaking. But after being discharged from the army (and being put in charge of shoe repair for the base while enlisted), Beck opened a shoe repair shop in Salinas, CA, in 1919, called Beck's. And under the Beck's name, Ole's descendants have been selling footwear in their community for the past 100 years. Today, the 10-store chain is run by the fifth generation of Becks: cousins Julia Beck-Gomez, the COO, and Adam Beck, the CEO, each of whom suc- ceeded their fathers in 2016. (While the two are the great-grandchildren of founder Ole Beck, his father, their great-great-grandfather, joined his son in the business, making them the fifth generation to work in the store." "Out of all the grandkids, we were the only two that started, basically in elementary school, and never went away," Beck-Gomez says. "This was where we were at a very young age." And while Beck and Beck-Gomez are tasked with shepherding their family business through a challenging retail environment, they say they're confident that they have a formula that works. "The Internet and the effect it's had on our business, it's a lot like the effect on business when the big malls came into play — and the industry thought it was the end of retail, a retail apocalypse. And it was department stores before that," Beck says. "For us, it's all about the consumer experience." "We really feel that when it comes to consumer experience, you're touch- ing four senses — smell, sight, touch and sound," Beck-Gomez agrees. "With the internet, there's no chance you can get the smell and the touch and the sounds." That experience includes a thorough and highly codified sales process. Every customer has both feet measured with a Brannock device and is measured again with the Aetrex scanner and the sales staff is encouraged to probe into each potential customer's needs and lifestyle to make sure they're showing all the potentially relevant products. Beck's has made sure to tweak its offering and focus on its niche busi- nesses, to not only better serve its shoppers, but to inoculate themselves against challenges in the marketplace. Fully half of their business today is done in steel-toe and industrial work boots and shoes. Accessories such as Purpose Built For Five Generations and Counting, Beck's Shoes Focuses on What Matters footwearinsight.com January / February 2019 ~ Footwear Insight • 61 Beck's Shoes Campbell, CA Founder: Ole Beck Leadership: Adam Beck, CEO Julia Beck-Gomez, COO No. of stores: 10 in CA and NV, plus 3 mobile shoe trucks No. of employees: Approximately 70 (continued on page 62)

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