Red Wing Shoes (Red Wing Shoe Company, LLC) is an American footwear company based in Red Wing, Minnesota that was founded by Charles H. Beckman in 1905.
Within 10 years of its inception, Red Wing Shoes was producing more than 200,000 pairs of boots per year and was the primary company manufacturing footwear for American soldiers fighting in World War I. Red Wing Shoes continued its tradition of producing footwear for wartime use by manufacturing boots for American soldiers during World War II.
Though Red Wing Shoes is known primarily for their leather boots intended for heavy work, in recent years the company has expanded its line-up to include athletic-styled work shoes and footwear designed for specific job applications (such as slip-resistant shoes designed for the service industry and boots ideal for the mining industry that utilize a metatarsal guard). The company produces oxford, chukka, hiker, and logger styles, as well as 6-inch and 8-inch work boots.
In order to comply with ASTM F 2413-05 and M I/75 C/75 standards for impact and compression, Red Wing Shoes manufactures many of their styles with steel, non-metallic, and aluminum safety toes and offers puncture-resistant options that meet the ASTM F 2413-05 standard. Red Wing Shoes also produces footwear that is static-dissipative in order to control the amount of electrical discharge from the body and electrical hazard in order to provide extra protection from accidental contact with electrically energized objects.
The Red Wing Shoe brand is still primarily handmade in the USA at the company's plants in Potosi, Missouri and Danville, Kentucky and two plants in Red Wing, Minnesota. In addition to manufacturing footwear under their own name, Red Wing Shoes also manufactures shoes under the Irish Setter Boots, Vasque, Carhartt (discontinued in 2011), and Worx brands. These non-Red Wing brands include a majority of models manufactured in China.
In 2008, Red Wing Shoes added a Heritage/Lifestyle catalog with models drawing inspiration from past styles within the company's century-long history.
Famous quotes containing the words red, wing and/or shoes:
“I was here first introduced to Joe.... He was a good-looking Indian, twenty-four years old, apparently of unmixed blood, short and stout, with a broad face and reddish complexion, and eyes, methinks, narrower and more turned up at the outer corners than ours, answering to the description of his race. Besides his underclothing, he wore a red flannel shirt, woolen pants, and a black Kossuth hat, the ordinary dress of the lumberman, and, to a considerable extent, of the Penobscot Indian.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The wild touch of thy dye-dusty wing!
I found that wing broken today!”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)
“Light she was and like a fairy,
And her shoes were number nine;”
—Percy Montross, U.S. poet. Oh, My Darling Clementine (attributed to Montross)