A 37-year-old founder turns to a very experienced workforce to compete in a niche corner of the American footwear market.
At the age of 37, Gregory Cordeiro has already become a seasoned veteran in the shoemaking business.
Cordeiro is the founder, owner and CEO of Easymoc, a shoe and boot making company that capitalizes on the simple moccasin designs created by Native Americans thousands of years ago.
After graduating from Boston’s Wentworth Institute of Technology, Cordeiro began an internship at Puma in 2009. The industrial designer subsequently landed at renowned shoe companies such as Timberland, Clark’s and Huckberry.
“Between Clark’s and Timberland, I got a lot of footwear experience in the manufacturing and sourcing side of things,” said Cordeiro. “I never wanted to say I could design a shoe without knowing how to make it and how every piece comes together.
“Everything we do is a moccasin construction, a classic loafer that wraps completely under your foot.”
Cordeiro started manufacturing his own line of shoes in 2012 as design director at New England Outer Wear, a startup company he co-founded. He moved on to the corporate world in 2017, taking a position as a senior design director at Clark’s.
After five years at Clark’s, Cordeiro wanted back into the shoe manufacturing business, so he founded Easymoc using the same old machines and experienced shoemakers he had worked with at New England Outer Wear.
There is an old saying, “you can never go back,” but Cordeiro did just that. He started the New England Outer Wear company in a two-car garage and now is the owner of a 10,000-square foot factory in Lewiston, Maine, that houses Easymoc’s 13 employees. Lewiston has long been a hub in the American footwear industry with shoemakers Rancourt and Quoddy located nearby.
“I am very proud to be a domestic manufacturer and it’s a huge part of what I am and what we do,” said Cordiero. “In America we kind of lost a lot of that manufacturing and part of the pride for me is to make shoes as nice as we possibly can and bring manufacturing back here. We want to create the economy and those jobs that left in the ’80s and ’90s. Having the skill set to come back has been the big motivation for me.”
Easymoc manufactures many styles of moc-toe footwear, including shoes, slippers and boots. Most of the material for its shoes are sourced from within the United States, including the finest leather from Horween in Chicago. Easymoc also manufactures with leather from Seidel Tannery in Milwaukee and S.B. Foot, which supplies leather to the Red Wing Shoe Company in Minnesota.
Each pair of shoes is handcrafted and handsewn at the factory with thread sourced from just down the street at Maine Thread. The soles are manufactured by the Italian company Vibram but are sourced from Vibram’s North Brookfield, Mass., manufacturing plant.
“I would say that on any given shoe at least 98% is domestic, but nobody makes eyelets in the U.S. anymore,” said Cordeiro. “Even the glue; all of my cement is made in New Hampshire at Worthen Industries. The laces are from Kentucky.
“In some of my boots we have canvas in the panels and that fabric comes from Fairfield, New Jersey. I used Woolrich in the past but sadly the mill in Pennsylvania closed so I switched to Faribault Woolen Mill in Minnesota.”
Navigating the tricky terrain of American sourcing has been just one the challenges of making footwear in the U.S. Finding skilled shoemakers gets tougher each year.
“The skilled labor here that knows how to make footwear is all but gone,” said Cordeiro. “Half of my employees are an aging workforce. They are 60-plus years old.
“I have one guy that is amazing who just turned 90 years old last week. His name is Peter Dorman, and he is a machine. He’s been making shoes for more than 60 years and he works his butt off and is the sweetest man.
“My challenge is not only finding the labor but also training people. It’s very expensive, and my guys are only going to be around for so long. There is a mindset of the younger generation that people don’t want to work with their hands because it’s hard.”
Easymoc makes footwear that can be worn around the house, in the rugged outdoors or just for a night on the town. The competition from foreign footwear houses and manufacturers is vicious with the American footwear market projected to be $103 billion in 2025.
“It’s hard to scale and damn near impossible to scale a business of $300 to $800 shoes when you are up against people that are selling $60 to $80 shoes and making money hand over fist,” said Cordeiro. “But I see a unique opportunity in this market, and we are not going anywhere. We are always going to be manufacturing here in the U.S.”
Easymoc makes approximately 8,000 pair of shoes per year, which serves just a small, niche market. That is just a drop in the bucket to the industry big boys.
“I had programs that we did for Clark’s that were 400,000 to 500,000 pair a year, which is crazy,” said Cordeiro, “That just shows you the insane scale difference from what gets made overseas whether you are Nike, adidas, any of those guys [compared] to what a small American company makes.”
Easymoc sales have not been booming but have grown year-over-year. To try and compete with his behemoth competition, Cordeiro has started a “Get What You Get and You Don’t Get Upset” page on his website. For $150, a customer chooses the size and Easymoc will send you a pair they have in your size that may be an extra one-off or may have a little bit of glue stain on it.
“You can say what you want as a priority and color and we will choose the closest thing that we have available,” said Cordeiro. “A lot of consumers are price conscious, so I am doing different things with my business to sort of meet that demand.
“Obviously, style is one thing. If you don’t like a moc toe, well, I get that, but there is an option on the table for Americans to make a conscious decision to buy American-made products. Costs, while not negligible, are becoming more approachable for the average consumer.”
Easymoc makes shoes for both men and women, but most of its styles are men’s loafers and boots. Cordeiro plans to expand his women’s line in the coming year.
Easymoc products are available in fine boutique stores throughout the U.S. and can be purchased online at www.easymocs.com.
