the sample and dismissed the idea as it 'would never sell'. It was only in his capacity as Overseas Development Manager that Nathan had any success with the shoe after introducing it to Oskar Schoefler (Fashion Editor, Esquire Magazine) at the Chicago Shoe Fair in 1949. He gave them substantial editorial credits with colour photographs in Esquire in early 1950. Bronson Davies subsequently saw these articles and applied to represent the company in selling them across the US, long before they were available in the UK. The Desert Boot was initially sold in Britain through shops in Regent Street, featuring a Union Jack sewn into the label, targeted at tourists. Lance Clark is widely credited with popularising them in Europe during the 1960s. The Desert Boot have been manufactured at Shepton Mallet, small scale production having initially occurred at Street. During the course of time, Whitecross factory in Weston-Super-Mare was subcontracted to relieve Shepton factory of the manufacture of the Desert Boot, before the Bushacre factory at Locking Road, Weston-Super-Mare was constructed in 1958. The Desert Boot was manufactured there until the closure of the factory in 2001. Clarks announced in July 2017, it was restarting manufacturing Desert Boots, using a new manufacturing unit featuring "robot-assisted" technology, at its headquarters in Street, Somerset. Up to 300,000 pairs a year of desert boots were to be made at the unit, creating up to eighty technical and managerial jobs. However, in January 2019 the company announced that this unit was to be closed, after failing to meet production targets. Wallabee Produced by Clarks from 1967 and based on a moccasin called the Grashopper, launched in 1964, by the German company Sioux, the Wallabee brand was manufactured at the Padmore and Barnes factory based in Kilkenny, Ireland, which Clarks had acquired in 1963 and continued to operate until its closure in 1987, when it was the subject of a management buy-out. Managed by Lance Clark who was responsible for having negotiated the licence to produce the shoes in Kilkenny and arranged for the factory staff to be trained in the production of moccasin shoes, the product took off once the decision was taken to market it in North America in 1968. As General Manager of the factory, Paddy Roberts took the shoe to a trade fair in New York in the same year, whereupon he quickly learnt that the trademark Grasshopper had been