Where Are Brooks Shoes Made in 2023? (100% True Data)

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The majority of Brooks shoes are made in Vietnam, followed by China and Indonesia. As of June 2022, Brooks Sport, Inc. has 10 factories in Vietnam, 5 in China, and 2 in Indonesia. In total 17 factories, worldwide are responsible for 100% Brooks shoes in the year 2022.

Undoubtedly, Brooks is so deeply involved in making shoes more ergonomic and technical. All their shoes are based on HMP or habitual motion path which simply says that every runner joint’s has the least resistance path.

For such tech pieces, they can not just lend the manufacturing work to any footwear factories; they need a kind of technical skill to craft and work along with the Biomechanics Scientists of Brooks Blueline Lab.

So let’s see where are Brooks Running shoes coming from.

Let’s See Where Brooks Shoes Are Manufactured:

As per Brooks Sports Inc.’s report for June 2022, they have a total of 37 factories globally (tier 1 & 2 combined). Out of 37, 17 factories are designated to manufacture brooks shoes only. Furthermore, 9/17 are tier 1 footwear assembly factories and 8/14 are tier 2 factories that handle midsole, outsole, and insole (Sockliner) work of brooks shoes.

The majority of brooks shoe manufacturers are located in Vietnam, followed by China and Indonesia. This simply means that none of its shoes are made in the United States, even though they originated and are currently located in the US. If you doubt about the work of the remaining 20 factories; they are to manufacture apparel, accessory, and textile/fabric. If you are a shoe lover, then you would be thrilled to know that Vietnam and China are leading manufacturing choice for footwear as chosen by brands like Saucony, ASICS, ON, HOKA, and Keen.

Just to confirm, this factory data is for 2022 and more factories can be added or removed from the Brooks partnership. Though, don’t worry I’ll update the post when the data changes. Anyway, Brooks has doubled its factory number compared to March 2021 data. The major change is in footwear factories, In 2021 they only have 4 Tier 1 factories which increased to 9. We’ll cover the exact location of brooks tier 1 & 2 factories with a description of why they choose them later on.

All these factories have signed the Brooks Restricted Substances List Compliance Agreement and all the suppliers had to maintain the supplier code of conduct. It suggests that manufacturers and contract suppliers need to provide quality material that stands with Brooks Running strategies which include net zero carbon emissions by 2040 and converting all polyester to recycled polyester by 2023 for footwear are two of the key strategies.

Besides this, Brooks Sports is working with their tier 1 footwear assembly factories and tier 2 midsole and outsole factories to check the amount of waste generated filtered by material type, destination, and weight. All this is for the company’s vision to eliminate the waste generated and sent by footwear manufacturing to the environment, landfill, and incineration by 2025.

Is Brooks Shoes Manufactured In These Countries Good Quality?

Remove that from your mind that brooks shoes must be of lesser quality compared to that which are made in the USA or other developed countries and to assure quality control over all categories of shoes Brooks has strict criteria that by 2025, 100% of Tier 1 factories should achieve and maintain a greater than 80 verified Higg FSLM score (Higg Facility Social & Labor Module) and 80% (by dollar spend) of Tier 2 factories must maintain and arrive at the score of greater than 80 of Higg FSLM verified score.

Here are the other three visions of Brooks Shoes for its manufacturing partners:

• Achieve 100% compliance with the ZDHC MRSL by 2025. Where ZDHC stands for Zero Discharge of Hazardous Chemical and MRSL says for Manufacturing Restricted Substance List.
• 100% of Tier 1 and 80% (by dollar spend) of Tier 2 to achieve and maintain verified Higg FEM Level 2 by 2025
• Vision to convert 100% of footwear manufacturing assembly chemicals to water-based by 2023.

All these strict compliances and on-paper vision forced Brooks to choose the factories around the world to only manufacture quality products keeping the environment and fair labor wage and treatment in mind.

I don’t know about you, but all these technical terminologies convinced me that all brooks products manufactured may not be great but force the partners and suppliers to manufacture at least above average quality.

Market Served By Brooks:

Even though Brooks is a US company, they offer shipping in the Americas, EMEA, and APAC regions. You can ship it directly from brooksrunning.com. In some regions, there are local stores that sell directly from Brooks Sports, Inc and the list of stores that brooks are working to sell their shoes is accessible via their store locator.

Aside, from official brooks stores, they have quite a presence on Amazon as a legit shoe store that you go and visit to check for discounts.

Brooks Shoes Manufacturing (Country Wise Data)

Vietnam

The majority of Brooks shoes are manufactured in Vietnam in 10 factories, where 6 factories handle Footwear assembly, 2 take care of outsole/midsole, and the remaining 2 manufactures insole or Sockliner for brooks shoes.

We have seen in the previous article of the series that Hoka shoes are also predominantly made in Vietnam and now 2nd episode reveals that even Brooks prefers Vietnam for shoe manufacturing. why?

I say why wouldn’t? Vietnam exports over a billion pairs of shoes of many kinds around the world and it has become the 2nd largest shoe exporter after china. So why brooks hadn’t chosen china? This is all due to Mr. Donald Trump’s announcement or threatening to increase shoe tariffs from 20% to as high as 45% (source). This resulted in U.S based companies moving their production from China to other countries to play safe. And that’s why Brooks Sports Inc. has slowly shifted from Chinese shoe manufacturing to Vietnam.

Brooks Shoes Manufacturer In Vietnam	City	Tier
Long Rich (VN) Co LTD	Ho Chi Minh City	Tier 1 (Footwear)
Long Fa (Vietnam) Co. Ltd.	Binh Phuoc	Tier 1 (Footwear)
Viet Power Co., LTD	Nam Dinh	Tier 1 (Footwear)
Vietory Company Limited	Hai Duong	Tier 1 (Footwear)
August Sports	Dong Nai	Tier 1 (Footwear)
New Shoes	Tien Giang	Tier 1 (Footwear)
Freeview Industrial (FVNS)	Tien Giang	Tier 2 (Midsole/Outsole)
Hoa Thanh Co., Ltd (Sanyu HT)	Hai Phong	Tier 2 (Midsole/Outsole)
Ortholite Viet Nam	Binh Duong	Tier 2 (Sockliner)
Shun Rong	Hai Duong	Tier 2 (Sockliner)

China

Before all these US-China Trade Wars, As per James M. Weeber (CEO of Brooks Running), around 45% of brooks shoes were coming out from China which now only accounts for 10%. As per some reports, Weeber is planning to make 65% of its shoes in Vietnam, 10% in China, and the remaining 25% in a third country which potentially could be Indonesia.

Though, As of 2022 presented data, Brooks has 5 factories in china for shoes, of which, 4 are tier 2 factories where 2 only manufacture midsole, 1 for both outsole and midsole, and the other one manufactures insole or sockliner. Moreover, the majority of brooks shoe manufacturers in china are located in Guangdong.

Out 5 only one is Tier 1 factory that is responsible for footwear assembly.

Brooks Shoes Manufacturer In China	City	Tier
Dongguan Lu Zhou Shoes Co., Ltd. (GSM)	Guangdong	Tier 1 (Footwear)
Foshan Nanhai San Yu Footwear Co., Ltd.	Foshan	Tier 2 (Midsole/Outsole)
Hailex High Polymer Material Science and Technology Co., Ltd	Dongguan	Tier 2 (Midsole)
Yong Jing (Qingyuan) Shoe Materials Co., Ltd	Guangdong	Tier 2 (Midsole)
Dongguan Eco-Polymer Co., Ltd (Ortholite China)	Guangdong	Tier 2 (Sockliner)

Indonesia

Indonesia is the new country added to the list of Brooks Shoe/footwear manufacturing in 2022. Though, it currently only has 2 factories; both are Tier 1 responsible for footwear assembly. If everything works out well then we may see even more factories in Indonesia in 2023 to manufacture brooks shoes.

Brooks Shoes Manufacturer In Indonesia	City	Tier
PT Dean Shoes (YMUI)	Karawang	Tier 1 (Footwear)
PT Long Rich (FIB)	Jawa Barat	Tier 1 (Footwear)

History Of Brooks Shoes:

I don’t like history contained in long paragraphs as no matter how impressive it is, it feels boring to me. So in this section, I am only going to cover the main points in Brook’s Shoe history to keep it precise yet highly informative (I hope you’ll love this effort). If you like the longer version; it is available on brooksrunning.com.

• 1914: John Brooks Goldenberg founded Brooks Sports, Inc. after purchasing Quaker Shoe Company in Philadelphia which makes bathing shoes & ballet slippers, and the founder continued making these shoes.
• 1921: Entered into the sports genre with the development of their first basketball cleats that had been worn by athletes like Mickey Mantle.
• 1929: Creates roller skates with a bumper in front to prevent crashes.
• 1930: Innovated football cleats that had Natural Bend Arc Support and Lock Tight to reduce injury by locking feet and shoes together during the game.
• 1938: Entered into the children’s genre by launching a scientifically developed shoe lineup called ‘Pedicraft’
• 1940: Brooks developed shoes for softball with soft rubber cleats which gained massive popularity.
• 1962: Brooks then-CEO Jerry Turner pitched cleats to Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle. Maris declined it but Mickey bought and appreciated it with a $44 check.
• 1972: Brooks jumped into the running shoe business in 1972 when Yale graduate Frank Shorter won the Olympics running the marathon. Running suddenly becomes brooks’ primary focus.
• 1974: Brooks gains true popularity among runners after developing Villanova shoes.
• 1980: Hugger GT in my opinion is the first breakthrough technical piece developed by Brooks in association with Breathable Gore-Tex upper.
• 1981-1995: During this time Brooks invested in their R&D to develop shoes like Varus Wedge, Beast, and technologies such as Diagonal Rollbar, Kinetic Wedge, HydroFlow, and Podular Technology.
• 1999-2011: Brooks continues to gain popularity by creating advanced technical pieces for runners like Adrenaline GTS 1, Adrenaline GTS 4, and PureProject. In 2001 Brooks took a pledge to develop and focus only on running/sports gear which inspire them to develop innovative technologies to prevent injury and run better while keeping sustainability and the environment in mind with Substance 257, MoGo, BioMogo, & Green Silence.
• 2013: Transcend was the first shoe to feature Brooks one of the renowned technology ‘GuideRails’.
• 2017-2018: Now, the scientists at Brooks Sports took a huge step by introducing great techs. Like DNA AMP is a responsive midsole that returns more energy to the runner than any shoe in the market for longer, faster runs. Aside from DNA LOFT, they developed Guide Rails 2.0 helps the knee, hips, and joints to move in their Habitual Motion Path and intervene when runners go off from HMP to reduce injury as brooks in their long study found that most injury happens at the knee.
• 2020: Brings the long-awaited and asked innovation with running bra in two variants
  • 1) Drive collection features flexible, compression style support.
  • 2) Dare collection that keeps you in with built-in molded cups.

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