In the face of cheap foreign imports and a decline in manufacturing, the last boot maker in Britain is thriving. Ruth Campbell meets the man behind Alt-Berg boots in Richmond

IN a scene reminiscent of the children’s story The Elves and the Shoemaker, workers are busy cutting out leather uppers, stitching holes, zips and rings and fixing the heels, toes and middle sections of inners and soles to dozens of pairs of handsome, hand-crafted boots.

All of them bear the proud stamp of Alt-Berg of Richmond, Britain’s last boot manufacturer, tucked away in an industrial estate on a windswept hill overlooking the market town on the edge of Swaledale.

A national decline in manufacturing, combined with cheap foreign imports flooding the markets has led to the sorry closure of countless UK shoe and leather factories over the past few decades. But Alt-Berg, which started out in the corner of a disused, damp and draughty First World War building more than 20 years ago, with a workforce of four, is much more than a mere survivor of an industry in crisis.

This pioneering company, set up by Darlington born engineer Mike Sheehan with his redundancy money after the shoe factory where he worked in town shut down in 1989, with the loss of 320 jobs, has got to be one of Britain’s biggest and most heart-warming manufacturing success stories.

Alt-Berg has just won the contract to supply all of the British Army’s military combat boots. That’s 50,000 boots a year.

On top of this, it has got down to the last two companies being considered to supply the Danish Army, and possibly police force, with at least 24,000 boots a year. The Scandinavian selectors have already told Alt-Berg that its boots have come top in its quality tests, which will come as no surprise to regular customers.

Alt-Berg opened a second factory in Italy, employing 55 people, seven years ago to cope with soaring demand and now makes about 50,000 boots a year there. Production has recently expanded to a factory in Romania, which is turning out 1,000 pairs a week, to meet increasing orders.

As well as being worn by our Armed Forces, special forces and more than 30 of the UK’s police forces, Alt-Berg boots sell to walkers, bikers, climbers, mountaineers, jungle trekkers, gamekeepers and even expert pylon and telegraph- pole climbers all over the world, including Malaysia, Japan and the US.

A number of well-known explorers and climbers wear them, and some even come to the factory to make use of the only specialised, highly precise fitting service in Europe, which offers five width fittings and two leg widths in half sizes up to size 14, resulting in at least 120 varieties of each boot to choose from.

But Alt-Berg deliberately doesn’t publicise its celebrity clients’ names. The company refuses to enter into any sponsorship deals. “We don’t need to,” says Mike. “Our boots sell anyway.”

The signed pictures and postcards from happy customers, scaling treacherous-looking mountain ranges, riding bikes through the desert and hacking their way through the Amazon in their Alt-Berg boots, which line the walls of the factory, are the only endorsement the company needs.

Feedback from those who wear the boots, including soldiers at nearby Catterick Garrison who have worn them everywhere from Bosnia to Afghanistan, has been invaluable. “Some of the best improvements are as a result of customers coming in and saying something wasn’t quite right,” says Mike.

ONE customer, Ed Stafford, who walked the length of the Amazon in 860 days in Alt-Berg boots, gave the company - which supplied him with five pairs for the journey - lots of feedback along the way: “I have one of the best jungle boots in the world because of that,” says Mike.

The secret behind the success of Alt-Berg, whose £3.5m turnover will double to about £6m next year, is neatly summed up by Mike, a dedicated craftsman: “I am a boot maker and we are here to make boots, that’s our business. We are only as good as the last pair of boots we make.”

Mike’s loyal, 22-strong workforce in Richmond includes the two original machinists, Lynne and Debbie, from the old shoe factory, who joined him in making the first boots more than 20 years ago, as well as a number of workers who have been with him since leaving school. Together, they make 5,000 boots a year here.

One of his biggest challenges is a shortage of skilled labour. He bemoans the lack of a manufacturing base and poor investment in training young people as engineers or to work in factories in Britain, which has meant he has had to look to other countries with a strong culture of manufacturing, along with skilled workforces, for large-scale production.

But it is in Richmond that everything is designed, prototypes are produced and all the specialist custom-made boots are manufactured.

This is the “brains” of the whole operation, but it is also very much the heart. Mike, who does not believe in management layers, clearly inspires great loyalty in his staff. Although, when I mention this, he responds: “They inspire loyalty in me.”

On the factory shelves, row upon row of up to 50 designs, including shiny, polished black and pale, lightweight desert boots, with names such as Hogg, Helvellyn, Bandog, Warrior and Peacekeeper, are lined up. Mike has designed and hand-made the prototype of every one and the development of a boot can take up to a year: “I do it all, the design, picking the materials, the cutting and sewing. It’s only when I have worked out the best way of putting it together I introduce it to everyone else,” he says.

“I do it slowly and am less skilful than Lynne and Debbie, I will never, in a million years, have their skill. They do it every day. We all have a role to play.”

HAVING worked at Cleveland Bridge Engineering, in Darlington, Mike was first introduced to the craft when he got the job of production engineer in the Richmond shoe factory run by the Shepherd family, after settling in the town with his wife Angela in 1969. More than 25,000 pairs of shoes a week were produced in Richmond then: “I found it interesting.

It’s engineering, just not with metal.”

But 20 years later, having been promoted to production director, disaster loomed: “Cheap footwear imports from Indonesia were selling at less than we could buy the leather for. We knew the factory would close.”

Mike looks back on it as the worst period of his life: “I could never live through those years again.” With four young children, the youngest only two years old, and a large mortgage, the closure couldn’t have come at a worse time.

He invested his £1,200 redundancy money in making good boots: “It was simple for me. We couldn’t compete against the cheap Far East.

But, at that time, walking boots were made in Italy and Germany and they paid themselves the same wages as we did. It was a level playing field.”

As a walker and motorcyclist, he understood what his customers looked for . Using cheap, second-hand machinery, he developed his designs, but lost money initially: “The first five years were a continual struggle, with an everincreasing overdraft and ancient machines we couldn’t get spare parts for. Some days when we had no money, no orders, and the machines kept breaking down, I didn’t know if we could last.”

He decided to concentrate on making better boots. As demand steadily increased, new machines were purchased and orders started to build.

Sitting in his office today, dressed in jeans and a woolly jumper, he points to the “tatty”

van he drives, parked outside. He has clearly never been motivated merely by making money. “My ambition is for the business to continue, to ensure they are still making boots in Richmond in 100 years.”

When I ask him where the Alt-Berg name comes from, he recalls a drunken evening with colleagues in the Black Lion, in Richmond, trying to come up with a name. He thought it meant “high mountain” in German, but later found out “alt” means “old”. He suspects he, subliminally, picked up the “Berg”, from the Carlsberg beer pump.

Although it wasn’t the intention, it’s a fitting name for a company which probably makes some of the best boots in the world.

  • Alt-Berg boots from £130 to £230 off-theshelf up to £1,000 for made-to-measure.
  • Racecourse Road, Gallowfields Industrial Estate, Richmond, North Yorkshire, DL10 4TG. Call 01748-850615/826922 or visit altberg.co.uk