The Dexter Shoe company was founded by Harold Alfond in 1957 in Dexter Maine. These shoes were carried in Sears, JC Penney, Spiegel, Montgomery Ward & Co. and eventually independent shoe stores around the country.
Dexter is credited with the invention of the factory outlet store (think about that next time your at your local nike outlet). Since factories made mistakes the company would sell the irregular shoes to jobbers (now called off price specialists) for a dollar and they would flip them for 5 times the price. Alfond figured that was pretty good and opened up their first outlet store in the 1960’s. When there wasn’t enough irregular shoes to fill up an outlet store, they just filled it with merchandise that was “stale” or older. Today, Dexter shoes are carried via Payless.
Now, without looking like an episode of VH1-‘s “pop up video” blog style, Neolite sole production started in 1944 (some 26 years before this shoe) and allowed for good flexibility (something lacking in some shoes to this day). Take a trip back to 1970 below.
