About 3,900 pairs of shoes are rolling down a highway tonight in the back of a semi-trailer bound for Louisiana.
The shoes are being donated to flood victims in the Baton Rouge area by p.w. minor.
CEO Pete Zeliff said he decided to make the donation just as a way to give back.
"Nothing more than that," he said.
"We partnered with a program called Soles for Souls through the National Shoe Retailers Association," Zeliff said. "They paid to send the truck and pay the freight and we specified that they go to Louisiana."
Most of the shoes on the 27 pallets loaded onto the truck this afternoon were manufactured in China and were being sold as closeouts, but Zeliff said he decided it would be better to donate them to flood victims.
Over the past several months, p.w. minor has moved production out of China with the goal of making all of the company's shoes in Batavia.
"We'll be making 500 pair a day by the end of this year and 1,000 pair a day by next August," Zeliff said.
Much of the ramp-up in production is made possible by a bevy of new machines that automate much of the shoe production process.
Zeliff said with a robot and another automated machine in place, the plant is already 20-percent automated. Nine more machines arrived within the past week and are being put into service.
The jobs of one of the machines in production can perform is to rough up the leather on the shoe so the glue binds better when the sole is attached.
"We went from five minutes to rough a pair of shoes to last week to Denise did a six-pair rack in 40 seconds," Zeliff said.
It's been his goal to move all of the company's shoe production back to Batavia since he and a partner rescued the business just before it was shut down, but the process has taken longer than expected.
"It will take three years from the time we invested in the assets of this company," Zeliff said. "It’s not as quick as I would have liked it to have been, but it’s still a pretty good accomplishment, I feel."
Below, photo provided by Pete Zeliff of his granddaughter, Nicole, with a country star Keith Urban and his band new pair of p.w. minor shoes. Zeliff took his family to see Urban at his show in Camden, N.J.
