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Ask the Expert - Advice from a Real Shoe Dog!

Ask The Expert

 Ask The Expert                 

As an integral part of our in-house product development team for over 30 years, Mark brings a level of knowledge about shoes that is parallel to none, he is the expert's expert. Send him a question about any of our products, and we can gaurantee you will walk away smarter!

Remember, Mark is a real guy (although we are pretty sure he doesn't own an orange shirt), so it may take him a little time to dig through his mental file cabinet to get back with you

Name:   *
E-mail Address:   *
Questions:   *
 
The Truth Behind Insulation
August 24, 2010 -- After returning from my vacation, I see that we had received our share of Ask an Expert questions that were well addressed by my cohorts while I was away. 

One particular question that was raised related to the different grams of Thinsulate insulation.  The timing of this question was excellent because our Director of Consumer Sales, Joe Hanning, has an outstanding background in outdoor related footwear and he was the person answering these inquires while I was away. 

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Gone to the Beach!

August 12, 2010 -- By the time that you are reading this blog, I will hopefully be relaxing away for our annual weekly vacation at the beach in Stone Harbor, New Jersey.

I plan to be focusing on a different type of toe, foot, and body protection during this week using my share of lotion on my skin that has not seen much exposure to the sun in quite some time.

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There is Much More There Than You Can See

August 7, 2010 -- Here we are well into summer and the baseball races are heating up.  It takes me back to my childhood routing for the Pittsburgh Pirates.  My father interested me in them at a young age.

We did not live in the Pittsburgh area, so it was a real thrill for me when I was able to go to my first major league game during a visit to Pittsburgh when I was probably about ten years old.

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Rudy!, Rudy!, Rudy!
August 4, 2010 -- I was recently talking with some of my cohorts here in Lehigh Outfitters regarding our favorite movies.  It is a pretty safe bet that I will say the movie Rudy before anything else comes to my mind and I did.  I love the movie Rudy as it tells the story of a person who supposedly did not have the brains to go to Notre Dame as a student and was even further away from having the physical prowess to possibly make its football team.  However, somehow he ended up doing both.....more
Big Brand - Small Price

July 26, 2010 -- We offer a wide variety of protective toe hiker styles in our Lehigh Outfitters selection. One of our key partners is Timberland PRO.  While there are certain Timberland PRO styles we offer on a regular basis, there may be periodic times where we access some of their other products that we choose to try as a test.

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A Substitute for Leather
July 21, 2010 -- We recently received a correspondence from a long time loyal Lehigh customer named Mindy. Mindy has been a long-time fan of our Lehigh Swampers products such as our stock # 1107. As a matter of fact, she stated that she has ordered several pair of this style over the years.....more
Trust the Mob with These Boot Choices
July 13, 2010 -- While I do not know about you, I can be a big fan of game shows and spend some of my free time checking out the Game Show Network.  One of my current favorite Game Shows is 1 vs 100.  For those of you that may not be familiar with it, there is 1 contestant competing against a Mob of 100 in answering questions to see if he/she or they ultimately win the prize money.  One of the aspects that I find interesting is there can be times when the contestant has to Ask, Poll, or Trust the Mob for the answer needed for he/she to continue in the game.....more
Some Stiff Competition

June 28, 2010 -- Those of you that have read our Ask an Expert blog have likely caught on that I am a huge fan of our Georgia FLXPoint products because of their extreme flexibility and underfoot comfort.

It was for that reason I did a double-take when we received some negative feedback from one of our customers regarding a FLXPoint style.....more
This Boot Walks!
June 21, 2010 -- For any of you who may tend to follow our blogs, one point that I believe would be very apparent about me is that I am huge fan of the Georgia Boot FLXPoint product.  I have written about it a few times as I enjoy promoting its underfoot cushioning and flexibility features among others.....more
Part 2: Best Boots for Working IN Concrete

June 10, 2010 -- We have encountered different comments over time regarding the ability of boots to resist the harsh work environments of working in concrete.

Concrete can be very harsh on boots in different ways.  One question we would have is does leather footwear tend to hold up acceptably in your particular environment.  If it does, we have some good composite protective toe all leather styles that could be well worth your consideration.

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Part 1: Best Boots for Working ON Concrete

June 2, 2010 -- We receive many inquiries regarding what footwear we have that helps deal with the stress and strain of walking and/or standing on concrete floors for long periods of time.

We actually have a number of different styles that we might suggest under those circumstances, but these suggestions can also be significantly influenced by what other features are needed by a particular customer.

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Who Makes the Best Work Boots?

May 25, 2010 --Being a person who has spent most of my working life involved in the development and functionality aspects of footwear, our marketing people have taken on the challenge of trying to make me into a marketer.  They throw different terminologies my way that I don't understand (such as a White Paper – Isn’t most all paper white unless it is a special colored version?).

Believe it or not, the article that I am to put together here is to be a White Paper and it is to be my first shot at trying one.  We will see how I do from here.

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Hidden Women’s Styles with Hidden Features
May 18, 2010 -- We were recently discussing how we sometimes have styles with special features that we fail to appreciate ourselves and even more importantly fail to call out well to you our customers.While we feel that we have a good variety of women’s athletic styles, there are two styles in particular that we have been failing to call out their most unique feature. ....more
Steel Toe vs. Composite Toe

May 11, 2010 -- Lehigh Outfitters has been providing protective toe safety shoes since the early 1920’s initially under the name of Lehigh Rubber and Leather Company.

Until approximately 20 years ago the only option for protective toe footwear was with steel toe caps. Steel toe footwear has served the industry well over this time and continues to do so today.

However, one key addition in the past 20+ years has been footwear with non-metallic composite toe caps.

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Boots for Blizzards!

February 18, 2010 -- Like many of you, we have been dealing with our share of snow and cold weather lately.  Keeping that in mind, we wanted to highlight some of our footwear products with special features to help you deal with cold conditions.

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Doing Hard Time

January 26, 2010 -- I think that one of the more frequently asked questions we receive is what can you recommend for working (be it walking &/or standing) on concrete for long time periods.

We feel that we have an excellent series of products in our Georgia Boot FLX Point series.  The FLX Points are made with an extra thick Comfort Core polyurethane cushion insole that directly contacts your feet giving and springing rather than compressing down.  These boots also have....more

SkidBuster Shoes - Don't Slip, Get Gripped
December 5, 2009 --One of the top features of our SlipGrips hospitality footwear is the diversity of brands we offer in these products. While we continue to offer other brands of hospitality footwear in addition to our SlipGrips such as Dickies, Converse, and Rockport; we recently added another brand to this group with SkidBuster.....more
Shoe Dog, Not IT Dog
November 2009 -- While part of my role with Lehigh is to be a source of technical footwear information, there are limits to my technical knowledge. If you want to know about what makes a Static Dissipative (SD) footwear style such as our Lehigh 5194 perform as well for SD as it does and be as comfortable as it is, I would be a good person to contact.  However, if your interest is in technical information relating to various computer and internet oriented sources, my lack of knowledge is very apparent.  ....more
Nobody Steals Bowling Shoes!

October 8, 2009 -- A number of years of my time in the footwear industry have been spent in the Product Development area.  While my eye for style has never been strong, I have been fortunate to work around other talented development people who I was able to learn from as well as utilize some of their skills, while I concentrated more on the detail aspects.

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This boot is not a waste!
September 15, 2009 -- When the request was first made for me to start a Lehigh Outfitters blog column, I did not know what I might be getting myself into at the time.  As I work on this further, I do not know if my fellow Lehigh Outfitters people realized what they were getting themselves into by their request.....more
Can someone mow my lawn while I'm gone?
August 14, 2009 -- It is that time of year when our family looks forward to having a week to just get away and have a relaxing vacation. I was so looking forward to it today that I left the office without putting together any additional thoughts for our blog. Any thoughts really were on trying to get home ASAP to mow our lawn before we could start on our journey.....more
Arch Support
August 4, 2009 -- If you are an individual who is specifically seeking arch support in your footwear, you would be hard pressed to find anything better than the orthotic chassis insole used in many of our Michelin products.....more
Mark - The Shoe Dog Blog
July 21, 2009 -- The Lehigh Outfitters organization has decided to start our own blog to help provide various product related information that may be helpful to our customers.

While I am pleased that Lehigh has requested for me to fill this role at this time, I am not a big fan of the decision to entitle this correspondence as “Ask the Expert”.
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