New England Footwear, the parent of GoLite Footwear, has been selected to receive funding as part of the Green Launching Pad, a joint venture between the state of New Hampshire and the University of New Hampshire designed to help bring new green technologies to market and create green jobs in the state.
Overall, six companies were selected from about 50 businesses to receive grants to help them develop, finance or expand their green business. About $1.5 million overall has been committed to the Green Launching Pad project.
Speaking to seacoastonline.com, Douglas Clark, chief executive officer and founder of New England Footwear, said he plans to utilize the Green Launching Pad connections and resources to establish shoe manufacturing capacities in the U.S. He plans to hire three UNH interns for the project and will hire a full-time project manager to have a plan in place by January 2012 for full-scale manufacturing. Established in 2008, the company currently sources its product from China.
“Let’s face the fact that the way we make shoes by shipping raw materials like our leather rawhide to China and have them ship back finished products isnt sustainable in the long run,” Clark told the newspaper. “We estimate that an amazing 2.5 million tons of carbon are produced annually just to ship our shoes from China to our warehouses. We believe that making shoes closer to home using energy-efficient manufacturing methods will have a major environmental impact and be economically smart.”
