Maine was once one of the world’s most unique shoemaking powerhouses—then the 70s and 80s happened.
Relentless overseas outsourcing (highlighted by the fateful purchase of Dexter Shoe Co. that Warren Buffett has since dubbed the worst investment he’s ever made) certainly saw jobs drift out to sea. But it also deeply unsettled the underlying materials and equipment frameworks that supported the region’s world-famous handsewn moccasin production.
In some ways, EasyMoc founder Greg Cordeiro spends his days worrying about exactly those things: how to manufacture great footwear in a place whose underpinnings are more and more unstable. In others, the former Clark’s designer simply can’t be bothered to give a shit. He’s making shoes in Maine and that’s just how things are going to be. If one day it feels impossible, that’s why there’s tomorrow.
Jason Pecarich is doing the same thing on the retail side of the coin with Division Road Inc, the Virginia-based heritage menswear shop—and now, highly visitable events-and-more 45-acre farm compound. Highly considered collaborations, done as often as possible with manufacturing brands, certainly results in consistently unique products.
But the direct support of the manufacturing ecosystem—and ripple effects of the education Jason and team deliver daily—is maybe Division Road’s most important contribution to something vital: companies and people cutting against a difficult grain to create something that’s just plain good.
Jason and Greg sat down for a chat about all of it: EasyMoc’s rise in a Maine that’s changed, brands vs. manufacturers, and the personality type it takes to be (or insist on collaborating with) the latter.
We’ve also been lucky enough to have Greg and Jason on the Shoecast—all are great listens
Jason: So throwing it back, I think we first met years ago when you were doing New England Outerwear?
Greg: Yep, you were just getting a lay of the land and came to talk to me and Dan, that was maybe 2013, 2014?
Jason: I think I was still in a business plan stage. We launched Division Road in 2016, but I was making sure I was going to the relevant shows. We talked, and I think by the time we launched, New England Outerwear was feathering out.
Greg: That makes complete sense timeline wise—2016 was when I was leaving New England Outerwear to go to Clark’s, and that would have been right when you opened Division Road.
Jason: And then I saw that EasyMoc was tracking on Stitchdown…
Greg: Yep, the LazyMoc was the New England Outerwear version, but the concept has always been the same. We knew even in 2013, 2014, that all these menswear dudes were getting super into Birkenstocks. Like you’d walk the shows and the coolest looking guys, especially the Japanese guys, were wearing their Kapital pants and Birkenstocks. It was like what the fuck, nobody’s wearing the White’s lineman boots anymore, these dudes completely flipped the script on us. So we were like shit, how do we react instead of doing big boots.
An early example of the New England Outerwear Lazy Moc
At the time, Oak Street had taken off, and of course you had your classics, your White’s and Nicks and Aldens. And then a bunch of coming and going boot brands, but nobody had really started to do anything on our side outside of Brett Viberg, which is why Brett and I initially began talking. I reached out to him with the concept of the Lazy Moc—he still has his wholecut slippers. So that’s when we launched the initial Lazy Moc, the Buckle model. And it did ok, but when we added a lace and a bit of an interpretation of a camp moc, that’s when things started to work with New England Outerwear.
But it didn’t take off the same way it did with EasyMoc three years ago. Timing is everything in life, and because of Covid, that shoe catapulted me to re-open my factory. Which lets me go back to doing the things I really want to do, which is boots with people like you. But I still can’t get you to buy a damn EasyMoc.
EasyMoc Buckle
Jason: Haha, well we have a dividing line with fully rebuildable footwear vs even resoleable footwear. But things change. Lifestyle has definitely changed. A lot of guys started wearing something lighter even if they’re still a true boot guy at heart. So you never know. One of our first collaborations was with Russell Moccasin, and true moccasin construction has always been at the heart of what I love.
We prefer working with workshops and manufacturing brands primarily. And I think your design sensibility and being in product development as both of us have been for years, it’s a lot easier to get things done. And I believe in that first conversation we essentially designed the Rambler 3-Eye Moc. I think we’d both love to sit around and make new shit all day long.
Division Road x EasyMoc 3-Eye Rambler in Black CXL
Greg: It’s not often you have someone on the other side who understands how product development works. A lot of people say “we want this dope color in these dope boots,” and it’s like, there’s more to it than that, let’s pump the brakes a bit.
I fully believe there’s a brand, and then there’s a manufacturer. And there are very few who are both. I equally love both, but 90% are just brands. If you put some of the brand people in front of a sewing machine they’d put a hole in their finger.
I could draw you a gorgeous boot, and fire it off to a factory and I can get a sample back and pay and boom: I’ve got a boot. But that’s not what either of us is really about. And I don’t think enough people fully get it—or the other side of the coin is they just don’t care. Haha. I hope they do!
Jason: It’s hard to scale manufacturing. Being smaller, and not bigger, allows that kind of control. But most customers don’t realize it—take denim. There are a number of companies that are US-based, but most don’t have full control of their manufacturing. And I don’t think customers really understand that distinction.
Preservation of that rare tier within quality goods is a huge thing for us. Because without it, there’s none of the tradition. You don’t have a Tricker’s that is 200 years old, or Viberg which is coming up on 100 years. You lose the thing. If we’re going to preserve anything in apparel or footwear manufacturing, we need to preserve those small legacies.
Greg: And half the people we work with are…archaic. In the best way. And I’m a luddite! Technology eludes me. I’m a stupid idiot. I like to draw shoes, and make shoes. But to a degree I have a modern business. Some of my suppliers are sending crooked PDFs from an AOL account.
We can cook up any idea we want. But it’s so much heavy lifting bringing all the pieces together. I’ve got a Vibram sole made in Italy, and a tuck-in shank made in the Midwest by a guy who’s about to retire, and then leather made in the UK. Even the glue! I buy my glue from New Hampshire, and I feel like every week I get an email that someone retired. It’s only heavy lifting to do this type of product.
And this is not to denounce brands that outsource. There are certainly amazing factories that just focus on private label that make stunning footwear. You can go to Xiamen in China, the Goodyear welt factories are amazingly good. But the sourcing is much easier when you can draw a picture, put it in a tech pack and get someone else to do all the work. The smoke and mirrors of brand vs manufacturer, there’s so much less of us that do what we do, and so many more on the other side.
Handsewing is also a 0.0001% anyway. You literally have Russell and Quoddy and Rancourt, and us. When you go all the way up to a Sperry or Sebago, it’s 100% on the other side. There’s a hard stop where you make it or you don’t. And we live on one side of that line.
It’s also a reliance on each other. You have the built-in power to be able to sell this kind of stuff because you’ve developed your customer base since 2016. I’m developing that trust as a brand again. It’s a three-year-old brand, who gives a fuck about that. I don’t have the name or 200 years behind me, but I have the power of Division Road and a few other shops who has customers who can say ok it’s next to Tricker’s, it’s next to White’s, then they must be good. But the hope is that it will allow EasyMoc to be here hopefully in 50 years, or in 100 years when I’m long dead. That’s ultimately the goal.
If we’re in this to get wealthy, we’re both a couple of idiots. It’s 50% pride. We both have a level of…maybe not arrogance. But we must have some big heads that we think we can survive off something that’s dying, but also preserve it. It’s a pride thing.
Jason: Everyone in this space is overly prideful for what they do. And I’ve chosen to sleep good at night with what I’m doing. Greg, you want to ensure all your materials come from the US. And that’s stupid! You can get the components from anywhere else! But it’s the same with us. We don’t even want materials from countries that don’t have environmental controls and labor practices and traceability. Plenty of people would say: “why would you go through all of that, just to get eyelets from the US?”
But I think the customer can feel all of that input and pride when they’re wearing and experiencing it. And I think it’s why, with zero marketing budget, all these brands can succeed against a sea of money on the other side.
Greg: From my side, everything we’ve done I feel pretty proud of. Every time we do a new shoe, I’m like, Jason is breaking my balls, but this is the best shoe we’ve ever done. And I think we’ll continue to push in the way we do because it works.
But a challenge we have, without a brick and mortar, is how do you get someone to understand that tangibility of holding a really nice boot in hand, and wearing it. A lot of what sells my product is that in-person experience. And I think that’s just a result of how the world is, sadly. The marketing side of things I am constantly struggling with because of who I am, and ultimately it comes down to cost. I’d rather spend money on leather than marketing.
Jason: What you do for manufacturing, we try to do for retailing. Everything is in-house. All of our content. We have creative control, we have quality control. But if you have a product you love, usually the sales follow.
Greg: Usually! Sometimes. Haha.
Jason: But the scale has a natural constraint to it. If someone came to you and said “we’d like to buy 1000 units from you”, I imagine you’d tell them, “I can’t do that.”
Greg: They have, actually! In the last month I’ve had five or six large retailers approach me for private label. And I’ve turned them all away. Everyone wants made in America, and they want to say it, but they just want to buy it. They don’t want to do the hard work, and all the other bullshit we deal with. One brand wanted 10,000 boat shoes in two years. And I said, are you smoking rocks? And they tried negotiating the price before I even gave them a price. I’d need to hire people, get leather, get resources.
I pay well, because I want to keep people and keep them happy. If you have a happy person who likes their job and likes their boss, they’re going to produce good work. I’d rather make less money myself and give it to the happy people making the happy shoes that allow me to have a business.
Jason: We need more of that rather than more private label. Because the private label eventually crushes the actual producer. If you look at industrialization, bigger brands, more outsourcing, maybe they want to say made in the USA, so they’ll have this special line that’s made here. And they’ll give this one guy a check that’s so big it makes his eyes water, but at the end of the day he’s still going to lose his ass on it.
Hopefully we get more young people interested in making, and out of that springs some actual manufacturing brands. But running an entrepreneurial business in the US that’s production-based continues to become more difficult. I’m not into deregulation or anything like that, but the bureaucracy buries you.
Greg: You can’t just be a small business and have a nice product and sell it. I wish people understood that more. They’re like, here’s Greg, he’s just over there being a dipshit and making shoes and selling them for too much money. I wish that was all I was doing!
Jason: Sounds amazing.
Greg: Actually 90% of my time is on the phone or on email navigating everything else. I want to tear my eyes out when I’m dealing with duty rates and HS codes and every stupid little thing. And then two of my great employees decide they want to move to Florida. There’s a view of having a small business: it’s romantic and it’s great. But actually I have the internal debate every day of, why do I do this to myself?
Jason: Being a place people want to work, and get paid fairly, and they can have a lifetime career at. Being a place where all your customers are generally super satisfied, with a product we fully believe in. To me that math is still very worth it. At the end of the day I know we’re in our little space and impacting it in a positive way. And our customers gravitate towards that. They want to support people they align with. They’re tired of having shitty retail experiences and shitty footwear. It makes everyone feel great. But it requires regularly reminding yourself of it amidst everything else.
Division Road x EasyMoc Rangeley Boot DB
Greg: At the end of the day I think it’s a personality thing. You are who you are. People have said to me, “you’ve got balls for starting your own business.” No I don’t! I do it because for some reason I want to. I’m not courageous at all. In fact I’m scared every day about surviving.
I wish I knew why I love what I do. I barely know. Some people love making hot dogs. I love making shoes and going fishing. I think it’s an existential question, and ultimately it comes down to what fulfills you in life I guess. For me this is it. I’ve blurred through my entire career for 17 years, it’s gone by in a snap for me. But there has never been a moment doing footwear where I said “I don’t like this.” I don’t know how to explain it, but I haven’t lost that feeling.
Jason: I disagree, I think it does take a ton of courage. Courage doesn’t come without fear and doubt and all the reasons to just walk away. Then it’s just a lot of stubbornness, and being willing to let the wheels fall off and put ‘em back on.
Greg: Designing shoes and making products people wear that aren’t really necessary is vain. And I always challenge myself with that. Why am I caring so much about how things look aesthetically? Why do I care so much about that? But my brain flipped when I first saw shoes that I made and designed in the wild. There was a guy on the train next to me, and they told me how much they loved the shoes, just went on and on. With no idea who I was. And I was like holy fuck.
Jason: You’re affecting people’s reality for sure. You’re affecting their experience. I learned that early on working near Tom Ford in the studio when I was studying. That was his whole thing. It’s not vanity. People’s perceptions of what they’re wearing, what they value, that makes a difference in their lives. I would say to stop discounting that. It’s hard to put yourself into the window of someone’s world. But when they put the shoes on, and they say, “I really love these shoes,” you’ve done something important.