Clogs Business Too Clunky For '90S -- Maker Of Custom Leather-And- Wood Shoes Tires Of Grind

PORTLAND - In a low-ceilinged basement, Mark Casperson stretched his last 10 pieces of wet leather over 10 hunks of carefully sawed red alder, then hammered in a row of tiny nails.

Casperson, wearing a dusty blue apron, was cobbling his last clogs, durable, wood-soled shoes able to stand up to soaking weather and jobs on damp floors.

Casperson chose Christmas week to wind up the business that for six decades has been making shoes much the way his Norwegian ancestors did in the 1800s.

Though mass-produced clogs are still in vogue a few blocks away at the bustling Pioneer Place shopping mall, eight years of flat sales for the higher-priced, custom-fitted variety led Casperson to retire his tools.

His clogs last for decades, so while loyal customers bought additional styles, there was no strong demand for replacement pairs.

Casperson, who took over the business from his father in 1989, also has been busier lately at his other job - as an insurance claims adjuster - and playing his clarinet with the Portland Opera Orchestra.

"I enjoy making things, but I'm a little tired of scrambling for a living like I've done for the last few years," said the 42-year-old Casperson, who has been making clogs for 26 years. "I was always better at the actual craft of making them than the marketing and sales."

It's not that he didn't try. Newspaper ads and fliers proclaimed his sturdy clogs. Word spread widely around the wet Northwest, and one woman from Australia even stopped in occasionally for a new pair.

Now his Multnomah Leather Shop may be bought by a couple about Casperson's age; she's a two-time buyer of Casperson's clogs and a former employee of mass-market shoemakers Nike and Timberland.

They would continue to handmake the clunky "hear-you-coming" shoes, albeit in a more fashionable neighborhood, upping production and marketing them hard as an environmentally safe, very Northwest product.

Casperson's father, Rudy, bought Multnomah Leather in 1964 from a Norwegian who started the business in the 1930s, making clogs for fishermen and Tillamook cheese factory workers.

Rudy Casperson did very well through the mid-1970s.

One of his customers then was Judy Gervais, the woman considering buying the business with friend Jim McComb. Her first pair, purchased in 1968, lasted into the 1980s, including several years trudging through New England winters and salted roads.

Casperson's business began slowing in the late 1970s and never picked up. He wore clogs himself for 20 years, but bad knees drove him to shoes with extra cushion.

Most clogs took him three days to a week to make, from cutting the wood into the shape of the sole - an inch thick under the ball of the foot and near two inches under the heel - and soaking the leather in water to the final hammering of nails and finishing.

In the 1940s, the clogs sold for $8.95. By the mid-1960s, that had risen to $13.95.

Casperson now charges $90 a pair.

"The problem is, you price them above what people can buy lesser shoes for, they will buy the lesser shoes," he said.