The roots of the shoemaking dynasty can be found in 1774 when Johannes Birkenstock is mentioned. He later even became ‘master craftsmen in shoemaking’. The Birkenstock brothers lived the simple life of rural craftsmen, hand-making shoes from start to finish: producing leather, fitting it to the last and attaching an insole. Life in the German countryside was characterized by harsh weather conditions, which meant that clothing and footwear had to be functional and robust. At that time, the average person would own one pair of shoes their entire life, which would be repaired over the years by a local cobbler.
Birkenstock (Shoemaker)
Birkenstock (Zapatero)
Birkenstock (Schuhmacher)
Among poorer communities, shoes would even be handed down from generation to generation. It’s no surprise, then, that people formed a close bond with their footwear. The fact that the poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe dedicated his 1776 work Hans Sachsens Poetische Sendung to a shoemaker, speaks volumes about the reverence in which the shoemaking craft was held.
Konrad Birkenstock (b. 1873), the great-grandson of Johann Adam Birkenstock, made the family’s first genuine shoe making breakthrough. From 1895 they were based in Frankfurt, a city not far from the family’s ancestral home of Langen-Bergheim. Konrad took on what was known as the ‘shoe-reform’ movement and brought their theories to reality. Like other young shoemakers, he designed lasts, which were essential pieces of equipment used throughout the entire shoemaking process, setting the size and shape of the final product. In 1897 Konrad Birkenstock developed the anatomically-shaped shoe last. This innovation featured a rounded heel, a malleable sole, and it distinguished between the left and right feet. The mainstream industry would soon standardize these new lasts for different foot sizes and integrate them into industrial shoe production.
勃肯（鞋匠）
Биркенсток (Сапожник)
Birkenstock (Cordonnier)
In the early years of the new century, there was a growing sub-culture which embraced nature and this fed into ideas around shoe reform. Konrad Birkenstock began to think more about how the foot could perfectly ‘roll’ inside the contemporary shoe. In 1902, his experiments led to the production of the first ‘insole’. Up until that point insoles for curing or healing damaged feet were made out of metal because the mainstream view was that the foot could only be healed or stabilised when it was ‘fixed’ in place. But for Konrad, insoles weren’t just about healing damaged feet or alleviating foot illnesses, they were crucial to all round foot health. For over a decade, he experimented with a variety of materials. In 1913 he settled on an insole construction made with a mixture of materials (including cork and latex), and officially registered this product under the name “Fußbett” (footbed). The introduction of Birkenstock’s orthopedic footbed was a revolution for the family business and foot health.
بيركنستوك (صانع الأحذية)
Birkenstock (Pembuat Sepatu)
बीरकेनस्टॉक (मोची)
Birkenstock has been a global player since the 1970s. Their products are sold in some 100 countries on all continents. It is headquartered in Linz am Rhein. With around 6,200 employees, the long-standing business is also the German footwear industry’s largest employer. Birkenstock operates a vertically integrated production and manufactures all of its footbeds in Germany. In addition, over 95% of all products are manufactured at the company’s own production sites in Rhineland-Palatinate, North Rhine-Westphalia, Hesse, Saxony and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Birkenstock Group also operates its own sales offices in the United States and Canada as well as in Brazil, Japan, Denmark, Poland, Switzerland, Sweden, Spain, United Kingdom, France, Norway, Netherlands, Dubai, Singapore and India. Their core products is the unique, anatomically shaped footbed. Birkenstock invented the footbed and has also shaped the meaning of the term “footbed”, which is so common today. The footbed is not only a unique, revolutionary product concept that paved the way for a completely new market. It’s also a core idea and a reference point for everything that they do.
Birkenstock (Szewc)
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