In April of 2014, the Department of Defense (DoD) made a decision to start enforcing the Berry Amendment when it comes to athletic footwear for the military. Per the Berry Amendment, U.S. soldiers must train and operate in U.S.-made materials where possible, including footwear.

While that amendment was passed in 1941, current military practice allows a loophole, meaning many soldiers are wearing foreign athletic shoes during training. When they receive a cash allowance for their athletic shoes, there’s no regulation enforcing that the shoe was, in fact, made in the U.S.

Now that the DoD has decided to take steps toward Berry Amendment-compliant footwear, that footwear needs to be on the market and available for U.S. soldiers. That’s where New Balance – a Boston brand with five factories in New England – comes in. The footwear company has been involved in the push to get American soldiers in U.S.-made athletic shoes for the past five years, and even though the legislation was passed nearly nine months ago, New Balance’s VP of Public Affairs Matt LeBretton says that almost no further progress has been made. 

If the military moves forward with these steps, a lot of other companies will be interested in selling to the military.

The first step following the pass of legislation is to test domestically made shoes from any footwear brand that wants to throw a pair into the ring. LeBretton was hoping that testing process would begin immediately, but he says there’s been no clarity around testing. He’s not even sure who has responsibility for that testing – but he assumes it’s the Department of Defense. So far, the only glimmer of progress was an August meeting at the Pentagon that invited representatives from a footwear company to discuss the compliance toward domestically made military shoes. (Even that, according to LeBretton, resulted mostly in contradiction.)

Regardless of the slow-moving progress, New Balance is hopeful that military shoes could soon be made in Massachusetts and Maine. LeBretton says that shoes will be tested from different brands to ensure that there are “very compliant” (meaning, 100 percent American-made) shoes on the market – what they won’t be doing, however, is choosing one brand or one shoe to be the standard uniform for all recruits, as the footwear and apparel needs can differ among military bases. Rather than a “one time thing,” LeBretton calls it an “ongoing, evolutionary process.”

For its part, New Balance will be putting their 950v2 sneaker up for testing. The shoe is not available to the public, and LeBretton says that it’s not a shoe that “would not be something you or I would probably want to run in.” He describes it as a high-tech shoe, incredibly lightweight but not minimal, with water-wicking and reflectivity components.

The diagram below shows the New Balance 959v2, as well as where each part of the shoe is made. Locations include Brighton, Haverhill, Fall River and Newburyport, Massachusetts. Saucony, which is owned by Wolverine Worldwide with headquarters in Lexington, is also to push a U.S.-made product for consideration by the military. But LeBretton finds such competition friendly – in fact, he says that New Balance encouraged Saucony years ago to join the fight in bringing military footwear production to American soil.

“Our rationale then was that we weren’t looking for a non-competitive process,” says LeBretton. “The more the merrier.”

He mentioned that some other footwear brands have shown interest in the opportunity to produce domestically military shoes, but he sees it as a “Field of Dreams scenario.”

“If they offer this, if the military moves forward with these steps, a lot of other companies will be interested in preparing or, rather, selling to the military,” says LeBretton.

LeBretton is confident that New Balance has the quality and the resources – including two factories in Massachusetts and three in Maine – to bring the production of military-grade footwear to New England. Still, there’s likely a long way to go in terms of the testing process.

While the military has decided to test all potential footwear for recruits, they haven’t put domestically made shoes at the head of the testing order, according to LeBretton, who says that it could take up to 270 days before the New Balance shoe goes through a testing cycle.

“That’s a real frustration for us,” says LeBretton.

Images: Shutterstock, New Balance