The Closer Cap Toe is the shoe I've been most excited to announce in our ongoing Flash Series.
As a quick reminder, the Flash Series is our ongoing promotion to help us move through some of the overstock we've accumulated as a result of Covid's impact on our company. This series is one way that you help us keep our team working and let us continue to innovate on the shoes you've come to love.
When we first started Wolf & Shepherd, we were not sure which style to launch with. After scouring the Internet and looking at competitor brands, it became obvious that this was the hero product that every dress shoe company was build from. Just one thing was missing. All these brands had built their products on heritage and nostalgia but had forgotten the comfort and modern updates relevant to our lives today.
I actually took a pair of classic Park Avenues from another heritage brand and decided to skateboard for a few hours at our local skate park to see where you start to accumulate blisters and discomfort first. From that and a few runs (yes, you probably don't need to run a 5K in dress shoes to test out whether or not the shoe is appropriate for wearing to work, but we like to reimagine the circumstances in which you might need to wear a dress shoe) We identified the following areas to make improvements.
First, traditional chrome-tanned leather's are incredibly stiff and take weeks, if not months to break in. Instead of settling for a full-grain, chrome-tanned leather, we opted for a 60/40 blend of vegetable oil to chrome oil, sourced from an Italian tannery. This allows you to get the perfect balance of softness, shine and durability.
Second, we modified the toe cap pattern to be both balanced and outside of the crease zone, where your mid foot flexes. Like many of our design decisions, the pattern is dictated by the functional needs of the person wearing the shoe. We also replaced the wood and nails found in traditional dress shoes with a compressed EVA for long-term comfort and a memory foam foot bed for cushioning that molds to your foot.
We're constantly trying to innovate on classic styles and reimagine what the dress shoe can be for today's working professional.
Thanks for taking the leap into a pair of our shoes.
Respectfully,
Justin
Half Marathon in Dress Shoes. A World Record.