Wolverine World Wide history

1901 – Krause organizes the Rogue River Electric Light and Power Company and brings electricity to Rockford, Michigan from 5:30 a.m. to 11:30 p.m. daily.

In 1903, he established a shoe manufacturing business in Rockford, Michigan.

1908: Krause and younger son Victor create Wolverine Tanning Company, also based in Rockford, to supply leather to the shoemaking business.

In 1909, he traveled to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to study a chrome tanning and retanning process developed by master tanner John Pfingsten.

1914 – The Wolverine brand name is chosen for shoes made of Wolverine horsehide leather.

1919 – Wolverine begins national advertising: Wolverine work shoes are sold by one of the earliest national sales forces and become a household name.

1921 – Flush with success, the company changes its name to Wolverine Shoe and Tanning Corporation.

1928 – The company begins selling shares to its own employees, becoming one of the nation's first profit sharing plans.

In 1941, during World War II, the Wolverine Shoe and Tanning Company began to work for the United States Navy, developing pigskin gloves and inventing what later became known as pigskin suede.

1946 – At war's end, company engineers build a factory to produce their new leather called "pigskin suede."

1952 – With horses disappearing from the American landscape, Wolverine Shoe and Tanning Corporation searches for new ways to use pigskin suede.

In 1957 Wolverine President Adolph Krause, son of Victor Krause, chose the canine name and basset hound logo from a field of ten possibilities.

1958 – The casual brand shoe, Hush Puppies, is born, having gotten its name from the treats Southerners used to quiet barking dogs.

Wolverine took the brand international via licensing agreements, the first of which was sold to Canada's Greb Shoes, Ltd. in 1959.

1963 – Sales of Hush Puppies shoes go through the roof with an average of one in ten American adults owning a pair of Hush Puppies.

1965: Company goes public with a listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

1972: Leadership reign of the Krause family comes to an end.

1976: Company enters specialty retailing with the launch of the Little Red Shoe House chain.

1981: Wolverine enters the athletic shoe sector with the purchase of the Brooks brand.

Wolverine acquired Town & Country and Viner Bros. shoes in 1982 and added Kaepa dual-laced, split-vamp specialty athletic shoes the following year.

Acquisitions and internal growth expanded the company's retail operation to more than 100 stores by 1983.

After a slight recovery in 1985, the company suffered a $12.6 million loss on sales of $341.7 million.

1986 – The company funds the Biomechanical Engineering Laboratory at Michigan State University and forms the International Design Center in Montecatini, Italy.

The well-known Hush Puppies logo was licensed to manufacturers of clothing, umbrellas, luggage, hats, and handbags, and could be found in 56 countries by 1987.

Although Wolverine World Wide's net income rose to $7.7 million on sales of $324 million by 1988, other nagging problems stole the spotlight from this modest recovery.

Most infamous of these was a 1989 lawsuit charging that Wolverine and Fred Goldston, a pigskin and cowhide broker, had conspired to steal cowhide from Southwest Hide Co.

In the fall of 1990, Wolverine announced another restructuring, including plans to scale back its retail operations, shutter a manufacturing plant, and eliminate certain shoe lines.

In spite of steadily declining employment in American construction and manufacturing sectors, sales of Wolverine work boots reached record levels in 1991.

Faced with a jury verdict of more than $39.3 million, Wolverine elected to settle the suit for $8.5 million in cash and bonds in 1992.

A focus on international growth increased the geographic distribution of the company's sales to about 50 percent international by 1995.

In 1996 Bloom was rewarded for his remarkable turnaround achievement by being named chairman.

Leveraging Caterpillar's rugged image, Wolverine promoted the new line as "walking machines, the toughest equipment on earth." Annual sales of the Caterpillar line reached nearly eight million pairs by 1997--eclipsing sales of the Wolverine brand--with sales being made in more than 100 countries.

The company took the difficult decision of closing down its Russian subsidiary, taking a $14 million charge in 1999 to do so, which in turn led to a decline in profits for the year.

In April 2000 Bloom handed over the CEO reins to O'Donovan, with Bloom continuing as chairman.

Nearly 1,400 employees were cut from the payroll by the time the restructuring was complete in mid-2001, representing one-quarter of the workforce.

That was the concept." In 2002 Wolverine sold more than seven million pairs of Merrell footwear, which was now distributed in more than 130 countries.

Prior to the restructuring, 40 percent of Wolverine's shoes and boots were made in the United States, but by 2003 this figure was down to 5 percent.

2005 – Company sales top one billion dollars for the first time.

In 2006, Wolverine World Wide entered into a global footwear licensing deal with Patagonia.

2009 – The company acquires the Colorado-based footwear brand, Chaco

2012 — Wolverine Worldwide receives prestigious industry recognition and is named Company of the Year by Footwear News.

2013 — Wolverine Worldwide receives Company of the Year at the Footwear Plus Awards for Design Excellence.

The company stopped production of Patagonia footwear in 2014.

In 2017 the company sold its United States Department of Defense footwear business along with a factory in Big Rapids, Michigan to Tennessee-based footwear manufacturer Original Footwear.

In 2019, Wolverine World Wide reorganized into two operating segments:

In February 2020 Wolverine settled Grand Rapids federal court action by agreeing to pay $69.5 million to provide town-supplied drinking water to affected residents.