How two cobblers are resisting the outsourcing trend

Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Linkedin Most cobblers left the United States for cheaper factories overseas decades ago. Here's how two small, family-owned businesses with huge consumer followings, Sabah and Okabashi, are bucking the trend.

Mickey Ashmore started Sabah, which makes shoes inspired by Turkish slippers, after being offered a pair of traditional shoes and researching the best factory in Turkey that could make a more modern version. But these days, the company's charismatic founder and CEO is excited about something closer to home: This spring, he quietly opened a new shoe factory in El Paso, Texas, to test new materials and styles of his shoes, which he calls sabahs and babahs. , to its American consumers.

The move bucks a decades-long trend of shoemakers moving overseas to cut costs.

"El Paso has a long history of crafting leather with cowboy boots and saddles," says Ashmore, 35, who is originally from Texas. "The way you make a cowboy boot is very similar to the way you make a sabah."

To be fair, Sabah, whose main shoe sells for $195, is handmade, which creates a somewhat different challenge than that faced by mass-produced shoemakers. But the move is intriguing at a time when talk of relocating and expanding American manufacturing to address supply chain challenges is front and center.

Sara Irvani, CEO of Okabashi, at the company's plant in Buford, Georgia, which is enjoying a $20 million expansion.

ROB CULPEPPER

In Georgia, another family shoemaker, Okabashi,...