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Jeffery West Red Line

Jeffery West Shoes and Boots, including Red Line, Black line and more. Born and bred in Northampton, the historical centre of the British shoemaking and leather industries, childhood friends Mark Jeffery and Guy West were surrounded by...

Jeffery West Shoes and Boots, including Red Line, Black line and more. Born and bred in Northampton, the historical centre of the British shoemaking and leather industries, childhood friends Mark Jeffery and Guy West were surrounded by tradition and history from the word go, even more so for Mark as his father ran the family owned shoe factory in the town. Perhaps not a surprise therefore that they would go on to build an international footwear brand, but the fact that they began their first business as sixteen year olds - selling shoes on various markets - shows remarkable prescience and motivation. At first, as Guy explains, "Mark and I would buy rejects and ends of lines from factories around Northampton, including his dad's, and offer them as they were or customise them to sell them on." They quickly moved on to having their own designs made up, but as Guy says, "because we were so young nobody would take us seriously." They had to approach a friend who worked as leather buyer in a local shoe factory to source and purchase the leather for them. In a shed at the hotel which West's parents ran, the duo installed a clicking bench and "paid a chap who would finish the work at a shoe factory" says West, "and then he would come over to us in the evening and he'd hand cut all the patterns and do all the clicking on our shoes." They would then take the patterns to a closing room in Northampton - 'closing' as West explains - "is when you stitch all the uppers together" - before taking the uppers to a factory to be made up into finished shoes, which they would then take back to West's parent's hotel to pack into boxes and cartons. Already set far for a career in footwear, the sudden death of Mark's father and subsequent loss of the factory, sadly ruled out Mark being able to take over the family firm, which motivated the two friends to take their fledgling business to another level in 1987 with the founding of Jeffery~West. Their close and early involvement in every stage of the manufacturing process during the last four years - an apprenticeship by default - stood them in very good stead. Their industriousness continued as they created a twelve-piece Jeffery~West sample range and approached prospective retailers before approaching a potential bank manager who, as West says, "sympathetically said that he would give us a try." He explains further that because he and Mark were only in their early twenties, it was for the bank "quite a gamble because at the time there was absolutely nobody in the industry as young as us." At Budwals Designer Clothing we offer a range of Jeffery West shoes and boots, offering a free UK delivery. Many shoes are on sale with a great price reduction offered.

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