The footwear industry has changed dramatically, but this company’s commitment to family and quality products hasn’t. Dan Hunt provides the details.

To be a shoe company in 21st century America, you have to be very big or very smart. Mason Companies, one of the largest direct-to-consumer footwear merchants in the country, is in the latter category.

Today, the family-owned company is a recognized leader in catalog sales and an innovator in Internet retailing, supplying everything from running shoes to fashion footwear, but it started out making rugged work boots for lumberjacks.

Dan Hunt

Originally, the company’s tough, welt-type construction footwear was shipped to mercantile and clothing stores, primarily in Wisconsin. The stores carried shoes on consignment, meaning the retailers paid for the shoes only after they were sold to the customer. It was a common business model at the time, but when the economy soured and the Depression hit, many stores returned their consigned shoes to Mason. To get rid of these unsold shoes, along with new ones being manufactured, dealers were recruited to sell the inventory overflow.

“We recruited people to go door to door, much like the Fuller Brush program, which was famous at the time,” said Dan Hunt, president and CEO of the Mason Companies. “We had branch offices in various parts of the country, eventually 14 branch offices in all, to manage these dealers. That was the beginning of the company’s national growth.”

Catalogs and credit
In time, the door-to-door model lost its allure for the customer, becoming as dated as, well, the Fuller Brush man. Not content to become a relic from another era, Mason changed its business model again.

“As we moved into the 1970s and ’80s, we consolidated, eventually closing our branch offices and moving into the mail-order catalog business,” said Hunt. The company’s first mail-order catalog, Wissota Trader, printed in 1985, followed B.A. Mason in 1990. Maryland Square, the third entry in its catalog lineup, was acquired from the Brown Shoe Company in December 1994. Stuart McGuire followed in 1995, Masseys in 1997, and Executive Shoes/E.T. Wright in 1998. Today, all direct marketing is done under the B.A. Mason, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of the
parent corporation.

In the fall of 1996, Mason Companies jumped into the revolving credit side of the catalog business with the Mason Easy-Pay Catalog, a mirror image of the Mason Direct Catalog but offering a credit payment plan. This was done to tap the growing new segment of direct-mail buyers who were accustomed to purchasing on a revolving credit plan.

In the fall of 2000, the company began testing the credit payment plan in a Masseys Credit Catalog, creating two separate house files for the Masseys Catalog and leading to the separation of Masseys Credit and the Auditions Catalog, previously known as Masseys Cash Catalog in 2002. Both credit programs continue to provide the company with growth in the direct-mail area.

Attention Web shoppers
The company had reinvented itself, moving from a door-to-door marketer to a direct-to-consumer catalog company. The new business model proved extremely successful and generates a significant part of the company’s business to this day. But as the 1990s came to a close, the market changed, and once again Mason radically altered its business model.

“In the late ’90s, we moved into the Internet business,” said Hunt. Internet sites were started for each of the company’s independent catalogs, and in 2001, Shoemall.com was launched. “The concept is to build a one-stop Internet shopping site for products of large wholesalers and distributors of footwear who want to market their products direct to consumers,” he said. Today, Shoemall.com is one of the leading Internet shoe retailers.

If that seems a little “techie” for a company located in the hinterlands of Wisconsin, think again. Mason prides itself on being a progressive, forward-looking organization. For instance, it installed its first computer, an IBM mainframe, back in 1968. Somewhat unusual for a mid-range company at the time, the investment helped pave the way for rapid growth, helping it run more efficiently and identify potential markets.

“Today, we’ve got the market analytics, search engine expertise, and Web marketing methodology needed to help us continue to grow our individual catalogs as well as Shoemall.com,” said Hunt.

Mason is determined not to become yesterday’s Internet merchant, paving the way for continued growth with sizeable investments in information technology. “Our current ERP is purchased software with heavy customization. It’s based on older-generation language and does not provide flexibility for business growth or a path for migration to newer software languages or hardware platforms,” explained Hunt.

Mason’s new ERP will be based on the Java programming language using Oracle databases, all running under the Linux operating system. The company is considering a $20 million initiative to expand and upgrade its distribution facility to handle a greater volume of shipping more efficiently.

“Perhaps the most important area we are investing in, though, is our people,” said Hunt. “We invest heavily in leadership and development—but that’s nothing new. We started out as a family-oriented company, and we’re still a family-oriented company, even though we now have 400 employees and are a major e-tailer.”

For example, Hunt said he and his managers expect their people to be mature enough to get their work done, but they understand there are families to raise. “Family and community make life worth living, and as a company we are committed to both. That’s why people like to stay with us for the long haul,” he said.

Hunt ought to know. The first person outside the Mason family to lead the company, Hunt began working for the firm back in 1987 as a part-time intern while completing his accounting degree at a local university, and he’s been with them ever since. “I think that tells you something about our culture here,” he said.