Trading on the comfort zone

By LIBBY MIDDLEBROOK

Kumfs Naturally is a success story.

While the shoe manufacturing industry has struggled to survive since import tariffs were lowered in the 1980s, the Auckland shoe-maker has increased its market share and become the largest shoe exporter in the country.

The 70-year-old business, which has never strayed from its founding focus on comfort and quality, has annual turnover of about $25 million, with exports making up the bulk of the family-owned business' income.

"The growth's come from Australia, but the New Zealand market's been very good to us," says managing director John Robertson.

"The business has managed to grow right from when it started."

The company was born in the 1930s when Mr Robertson's father, David, and uncle, Mervin Adams, both Auckland podiatrists, designed their first shoe.

After analysing more than 5000 foot patterns, the pair believed they had designed a shoe that even the most bunion-ridden woman's foot would relish.

"They contracted a local manufacturer to produce shoes and it's just grown from there," says Mr Robertson, who joined the business in 1966.

Today, the Adams/Robertson-owned company makes more than 100 styles and exports more than 70 per cent of 8000 pairs made weekly.

Production has doubled during the past five years.

The company, which manufactures most of its shoes in its St Lukes factory, supplies more than 220 retailers in Australia, New Zealand and the United States, along with its 10 Kumfs shoe stores in New Zealand, 12 across the Tasman and two Sydney franchises.

The only serious blip in the company's 70-year history was after the 1987 sharemarket crash, when it was forced to reduce production from 3000 pairs a week to 1800 because of reduced demand.

Mr Robertson says it is the design, quality and comfort of his shoes that has kept business humming for almost seven decades.

All shoes are manufactured from soft materials such as cow, pig and kangaroo hide, with special components such as poron added to the base of the shoe to soak up excess perspiration.

Kumfs even produces a range of shoes to accommodate orthotics - special inner-soles placed at the bottom of a shoe to prevent tendon and ligament damage.

All shoes fall into the medium-to-high price range, at up to $200 a pair.

"Those are the sorts of things that make our shoes special. Things like poron are expensive but it's very comfortable. It's all about comfort - there's not really anyone else around doing anything like it."

The active lifestyle of women today has also boosted business, with customers putting more emphasis on comfort.

"Women have become far more casual and are attracted to more comfortable shoes, which has been very good for us. People are more health-conscious and live more active lifestyles," says Mr Robertson.

"Women are living longer and they don't just want pretty shoes, they want them to be comfortable, too."

These days the biggest problem facing the company, which used the Mervin Adams brand until the early 1980s, is producing enough shoes.

For the past two years production has been "way behind demand," which has steadily increased in Australia and the US, where Kumfs supplies about 50 retailers.

The company has been forced to turn away customers and stop building its five-year-old franchise system, along with its US and Australian retail operations.

"We went into Australia really quickly because we saw the Sydney market as a very large market. It's very difficult to market your products without having a lot of stores, but it can become very expensive and very slow.

"We've needed to catch up and go through a period of consolidation. Our problem is that we've got into a situation where we've run over what we can produce. By the end of this year we should have caught up." Mr Robertson says the company is now shedding its conservative management style to allow greater growth in manufacturing and has just invested more than $1 million in production plant.

And despite wanting to slow growth temporarily, Kumfs has kept up a $1 million advertising campaign across New Zealand and Australia to remind customers of the unique benefits of its shoes.

Meanwhile, the company remains very much a family business, with 89-year-old David Robertson still in the office most days and still designing shoes for a few selected customers. His 31-year-old son, Andrew, has taken on a job-share position as joint managing director.