Timberland

Timberland is the Stratham, New Hampshire outdoor footwear and apparel brand built around the waterproof yellow boot introduced in 1973 by the Swartz family's Abington Shoe Company — renamed The Timberland Company in 1978 and taken public in 1987 — which became a global name in boots, outdoor clothing and, through its Earthkeepers lines, corporate environmental responsibility. Timberland traded on the New York Stock Exchange as TBL until VF Corporation, the owner of The North Face and Vans profiled in this section, completed its acquisition on September 13, 2011, at $43 per share. The brand remains headquartered in Stratham and continues as one of VF's principal outdoor brands.

Company Profile

The boot is the business: a seam-sealed waterproof work boot that crossed from New England job sites to global street fashion in the 1990s without changing its specification, giving Timberland the rare wholesale asset of a single iconic product whose authenticity both markets trusted. Apparel, the PRO work line and accessories extend the franchise the boot created.

Timberland's environmental accounting — recycled materials, tree-planting programmes, product eco-labels — was, under Jeffrey Swartz, the most developed in the footwear industry of its era, and it is part of why VF paid a full price in 2011: the acquirer bought a brand whose values narrative it intended to keep, and has kept.

The range behind the name is footwear including the waterproof yellow boot, outdoor and work apparel and accessories under Timberland and Timberland PRO. Its customers are outdoor and footwear retailers, department stores and the brand's own stores and online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Timberland in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Timberland with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Acquired — VF Corporation completed its acquisition of The Timberland Company on September 13, 2011, at $43 per share (total consideration about $2.3 billion) — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

For anyone researching the fashion industry's public-company era, Timberland is a useful case: a New Hampshire bootmaker whose one yellow boot carried a company into VF's portfolio. The summaries in this section were compiled while the story was still unfolding, which is exactly what makes them worth keeping — they preserve what the company said about itself at the time, before the outcome was known.

History in Brief

The October 2013 summary describes the brand in its VF years: best known for men's, women's and kids' footwear — hiking boots, boat shoes, sandals and dress and outdoor casual footwear — Timberland also makes apparel including outerwear, shirts, pants and socks, and accessories such as sunglasses, watches and belts, under the Timberland and Timberland PRO names. That single dated summary is the whole of its record here and is folded into this page.