Name: Why Fans Consider Solovair’s $200 Boots the ‘Real Dr. Martens’
Uploaded: 2024-11-21T05:01:00Z
Duration: 8 min 44 s
Description: Dr. Martens are everywhere. But vintage pairs marked “Dr. Martens by Solovair” reveal a quiet history between two bootmakers who have gone down very different paths. This is how Solovair stayed local and found a loyal fan base.

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Dr. Martens are everywhere. But vintage pairs marked “Dr. Martens by Solovair” reveal a quiet history between two bootmakers who have gone down very different paths. This is how Solovair stayed local and found a loyal fan base. Photo: George Downs for WSJ

https://m.wsj.net/video/20241122/0aa62b08-f9a5-42fb-b315-76e5c1257cd3/2/hls/manifest-hd-wifi.m3u8

Dr. Martens are everywhere. But vintage pairs marked “Dr. Martens by Solovair” reveal a quiet history between two bootmakers who have gone down very different paths. This is how Solovair stayed local and found a loyal fan base.

Why Fans Consider Solovair’s $200 Boots the ‘Real Dr. Martens’

Work boots are one of those funny things where they started out with such a clear, utilitarian purpose.

It's like the one thing that separates man from the ground.

And then over time the work boot gets adopted.

Weston: It was adopted by the skinheads and then punk and emo.

And then it becomes a piece of fashion and it becomes cool.

I think when most people see the style of boot, they think of Doc Martens. But there is this other brand out there that's not nearly as famous, and that's Solovair.

The first time I heard about Solovair, I remember thinking, okay, these look like a Doc Martin without the yellow stitching. And like any good reporter, I kind of Googled what the company was and figured out that there was a relation there.

Weston: It used to be Doc Martens by Solovair.

Jamie: And then times changed.

In the '90s that contract ended and so they went their separate ways.

Doc Martin kept their name, Solovair kept their name and Solovair started making their own version of boots. Instead of just rolling over and dying, where Doc Martin was like, "Hey, we don't need you anymore. We're moving things over here." They were like, "No, we've gotta do this. We've gotta figure out a way to stay alive."

A guy named Ivor Tilley, a local man, purchases Solovair and decides to keep the production going in Northampton. Doc Martin takes the opposite approach. Doc Martin ends up being acquired by a private equity firm. When you're purchased by someone else that has their eye to boosting the revenue of that company and you typically end up trying to do things at a lower cost overseas.

And so that's where you get that divide of, are the Solovair's the real Doc Martens or Doc Martens the real Doc Martens.

I went down the rabbit hole of Reddit threads about Solovair versus Doc Martens and you realize how feverish the following is for this brand.

If you know who Solovair is and you see, oh, it's a pair of Solovair's, then it's almost an inroad to be like, "Hey, I see you got Solovair's on." So you know a little bit deeper into the Doc Marten lore. So when you first snap your foot on the inside, you know you, ooh, it feels pretty comfy. I feel all that squish in that sole, I feel the voids in it.

Solovair is like it's a kind of bit of like a cockney abbreviation of Sole Of Air, so Solovair.

Solovair's been around for about 70 years and its parent company NPS has been around for twice as long as that, and they're based in Northampton in England. They supplied the British Army with Boots. It also supplied various government agencies where people are on their feet all day, like the National Health Service and the postal service.

I mean the UK at one point was almost like the epicenter of footwear in the world.

It's like the way that champagne is made in France. That's Northampton for British shoes. In the '90s when a lot of shoe companies start to shift their production overseas, Northampton sees a lot of companies move their production out of England.

Everybody in Northamptonshire there was linked to kind of footwear felt that, like, that was almost the end of footwear.

2006 was really a do or die moment for Solovair. The co-op that owned the company was looking to sell the factory to a property developer.

But that's where my father-in-law, who's a manufacturer of footwear components, offered to take over the business by giving them an opportunity to continue manufacturing.

Up until 2006, the brand was really focusing on producing shoes for other clients, but then they decided to really focus on selling their own product to consumers rather than third party clients.

Overall, Solovair produces 2,000 shoes a week. If you look at Doc Martens, because of how they produce things and because of the price point they sit at, they're much more keen to hop onto trends. Solovair can't do that because their factory is not large enough.

Christian: Our products have roughly got about 140 processes that are involved in making it.

With Solovair there's more steps that go into the shoe, but that means that there's more attention to detail within the shoe. If you're envisioning a factory where everything is just moving down an assembly line, that's not how Solovair produces.

There's always like the regular sounds you hear. Different machines make different noises. If you've been there long enough, you know who's doing what.

Christian: Goodyear welted construction footwear, that's really what almost saved Northamptonshire in the UK.

Goodyear welted shoes, you can continually resole them and they last a long time. But the term is really synonymous with premium, well-made footwear.

A traditional Goodyear welted way is the welt strip, which is that strip that has a stitch around, it's sewn to the upper and then that welt stitch is also sewn down to the outsole.

And basically it's an awl, it's like a metal spike, that goes through the rib and then we just come right to the end and we cut those by hand.

The highest quality boots in the world are still made that way because it's been time-tested and it still works better than the vast majority of modern technology.

It's more time-consuming to create a Goodyear welted shoe than to, for instance, glue an upper onto a sole. So it does rely on this institutional know-how.

It's difficult to try and explain to people. It's not something you can read in a book. You've got to feel it for yourselves.

Jacob: That is that human touch that I think people look for.

We're in a kind of fortunate position at the moment where, 'cause it's family owned, there's no external influence.

I think people appreciate a brand that's sort of anti-hype, anti-buzz, isn't sort of promoting itself. Is sort of ticking along doing things the old school way.

Good quality leather, but that's what makes a shoe. You can smell it.

What are you smelling for?

Leather smell.

I've always thought that with a company like Solovair, they have kind of a inherent flaw built into their business plan, which is that the shoes are almost too good. Their shoes are designed to be worn for a long time. But today people are more used to and more familiar with buying footwear at a much more accelerated cadence.

So Solovair is a little over 200 bucks. The leather is a little bit thicker, has a little bit more of the grain. It's that smooth part of the leather that you associate with that, like, smooth leather look that holds all those loose suede fibers together. They also pack a lot more oils and conditioning into the leather, so it's gonna last longer. They're not gonna flake and crack nearly as easy. You might not get the tens of thousands of units sold every single week, but you also don't get that stigma of like, ugh, they're not, they're not what they used to be. They sold out.

And we didn't claim to be the most fashion-forward kind of, type of footwear. We had no ambitions and to massively ramp up and make millions of pairs of shoes. It is trying to find that balance and making sure that our workforce is happy and that we still remain and have our DNA and we still make in Wollaston, our tiny village.

Doc Martens is this kind of global household name. A small percentage of Doc Martens are still made in England and Solovair has stayed like a small family-owned slow production company. It's sort of like comparing Converse with a niche Japanese canvas shoe maker. The fact that their products happen to look similar doesn't mean that their fortunes are the same, or that they can sort of be directly compared to one another. It's in some ways comparing apples with oranges.

I think the Solovair brand to a lot of people, and including me, is kind of the underdog story. They're really kind of the man behind the scenes that is now in the front of the stage.

Everybody likes the underdog. I think we stand on our own two feet now.

When I first started, I remember I was coming home and telling everybody what I'd done 'cause it just, it seemed so different to any other job I'd had.

We're passing all those skills onto the younger generation and trying to get people back into the trade and learn what we do really.

Weston: When I see that tag, I'm like, they're still trying to do it the old school way, trying to keep English shoe and boot making alive that could easily die off at any point. They're still trying.