Stride Rite Corporation - History

History

Stride Rite was founded in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919, as the Green Shoe Manufacturing Company (“Green Shoe”) by Jacob A. Slosberg and Philip Green. Green sold his interest to Slosberg twelve years later. Jacob's sons Samuel and Charles were heads of sales and manufacturing respectively. Green Shoe became a public company in 1960 and was listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It adopted the Stride Rite Corporation name in 1966 to emphasize the brand name of one of its best-known products. The name was purchased from another shoe manufacturer in 1933. In 1968, the son of a Lithuanian immigrant, Arnold Hiatt, became president of the firm, and sales were $35 million. Hiatt pursued a policy of acquisitions to keep the firm in tune with consumer preferences.

Three times in a row in the last two decades there have been major changes in the consumer taste in footwear, and he's been there every time with a new acquisition. —--Steven Nichols, a Stride Rite alumnus.

Stride Rite’s first retail store was opened in 1972. The Sperry Top-Sider and Keds brand names were purchased from Uniroyal in 1979. Stride Rite purchased Toddler University in 1994. During 2005 Stride Rite completed its acquisition of Saucony and in 2006 Stride Rite purchased Robeez.

Hiatt was instrumental in bringing in socially conscious business methods such as opening a day care center in 1971, banning smoking in 1986, and sponsoring 40 inner-city youth to attend Harvard University, Hiatt's alma mater. In 1992, Hiatt stepped down as chairman to pursue philanthropy through the company's foundation, and he has become a staunch advocate for electoral reform. He contributed $500,000 to the Democratic Party in 1996, and at a private meeting with then-president Bill Clinton and other sizeable campaign contributors, urged the president to get money out of politics, but was rebuffed. Later, he was praised by Harvard Law School professor Lawrence Lessig for his advocacy of electoral reform.

My own special interest is to get special-interest money out of the political process. The influence of that money indirectly costs taxpayers far more than the costs of liberating the electoral process from the special-interest lobbyists. —Arnold Hiatt, 2007

In 2007, Payless ShoeSource of Topeka, Kansas acquired Stride Rite. On August 16, 2007, the company changed its name to Collective Brands, Inc. By 2009, it was announced that Stride Rite would operate under the further-revised name of Collective Brands Performance + Lifestyle Group.

In 2012, Stride Rite, along with Keds, Sperry Top-Sider and Saucony, became part of Wolverine World Wide after a joint agreement with Blum Capital Partners and Golden Gate Capital acquired the Performance Lifestyle Group of Collective Brands for US$1.23 billion.