Current production batch now available See The Marlin →

Selvaine

A Note From Tom · Selvaine

$110 at the department store. About $25 to make. So who's keeping the other $85?

You clicked because you already had a feeling about that number. Let me show you exactly where it goes.

I'm not going to tell you a story about leather. I'm going to show you a receipt.

A boat shoe like the one in the window runs about $110. It costs roughly $25 to put together — materials, the factory, the box. That's not a secret in the business. It's just not something anybody prints on the tag.

So here's the honest breakdown of where your $110 actually goes.

Where Your $110 Goes
The actual shoematerials, the factory, the box
~$25
The store's cutrent, staff, the mall location
+$35
The distributorthe hands between factory and shelf
+$20
The name on the boxthe logo, the ad budget, the sponsorships
+$30
What you paid for an actual shoeroughly a quarter of the ticket
$25 of $110
Mine, straight to youno store, no distributor, no name to pay for
$45
Same kind of shoe. I just took the $85 of middlemen out of the middle.

It was never the shoe that got expensive. It was everything around it.

A guy named Gene wrote me one line that says the whole thing better than I can.

It's all overhead now.— Gene Orlando

That's it. That's the answer.

The shoe didn't get more expensive to make. If anything it got cheaper, once the work moved overseas. What got expensive was the stack of people who needed a cut before it reached your foot — the store, the distributor, the brand, the marketing. You've been paying for the overhead and calling it the shoe.

You remember when a boat shoe was a $20 thing off a hardware-store shelf.

You're not imagining it.

Bought a pair every year at Spags in Shrewsbury in the 80s and 90s. They were always under $20.— Carl Peterson

Spags sold them next to the boom vangs and the winch handles. No mall. No mahogany display. No quarterly ad campaign.

The shoe cost what the shoe cost. Somewhere along the way it got moved into a lifestyle department and picked up a lifestyle price — and the shoe inside got worse, not better, while it happened.

I'm one guy. There's no building full of people who need a cut.

No retail lease.

No distributor.

No sponsorship deals, no celebrity, no department-store markup stacked on top.

I have the shoe built, I sell it to you, that's the whole chain.

That's not a discount or a sale or a gimmick. $45 is just what's left when you stop paying eighty-five dollars to everybody standing between the factory and your front door.

The Marlin · Current Run

The classic boat-shoe shape. $45 a pair, straight to you.

Leather-finish upper. Classic deck-lace tie. Stitched moc-toe. Siped non-slip sole. Built overseas, sold direct — no markup, no middleman, no name to pay for.
See The Marlin →
30-day return · no store credit · no runaround

"But how can it be any good at $45?" Fair question. Here's the straight answer.

It's an honest shoe at an honest price, and I'll tell you exactly what it is before you pay.

Leather-finish upper, not full hide. Waxed cotton laces, not rawhide. Built overseas, like nearly every $45-to-$110 boat shoe on the market right now.

It is not the $300 hand-made pair from Quoddy or Rancourt. If that's what you're after, buy those — they're the real thing and I'll say so.

What it is: the classic shape and fit, at the price a boat shoe used to cost before the overhead swallowed it. That's the trade. No story, no markup, no $85 disappearing into somebody's pocket.

You did the math the second you saw the ad. The math is right.

Four colors. Blue, brown, black, white.

One pair $45. Two pairs $80. Three pairs $110 — the same ticket as one pair from the people keeping the $85.

Wear them on the dock, to the cookout, wherever. If they're not the shoe for you, send them back inside 30 days. No store credit, no runaround.

See The Marlin →
Current production batch · 30-day return