Footwear for the places your customers go.
We develop hunting, waterfowl, fishing, and hiking footwear for outdoor brands. I've been developing footwear for more than forty years, and I work on every program we take on.
Footwear is a different sport.
You've built the brand, the audience, and the reputation. Footwear asks for things apparel and gear never did: a last, a mold for every size, factory minimums, months of sampling, and testing in water and cold that a showroom never shows you.
Every one of those decisions is expensive to undo. A last that's a few millimeters off shows up as returns a season later. We make those calls with you, early, with the same senior hands on your project from the first sketch to the boxes at your warehouse.
Made for cold water, wet decks, and long miles.
Dry, warm, and quiet in flooded timber
Rubber and neoprene boots, waterproof leather, insulation matched to the hunt.
Grip on a wet deck, dry by the next trip
Non-marking outsoles, siping and drainage, materials that handle salt and sun.
Stable under a pack, light at mile ten
Lasts with room for real socks, support on uneven ground, waterproofing where it counts.
Iiley Thompson Sr.
I started in footwear development at Nike in 1984. Since then I've worked at adidas, Under Armour, and Huk, and in 2019 I started Double i Works to work directly with outdoor brands. I still review every sample myself.
Four ways to work with us
Footwear line development
For outdoor brands adding footwear: line plan, design direction, lasts, tooling, sampling, testing, and a factory that specializes in your construction.
Launch a line Existing lineDevelopment audit
A senior look at a line that's costing you margin: FOB cost, returns, fit, the calendar, and how your factory is really performing.
Audit a line FactoriesSourcing & production
The right factory in the U.S. or Asia, a clean move if you need one, costing you can defend, and quality held through delivery.
Source and produce PerformanceFit, lasts & wear testing
Lasts built for your customer's foot, grading across the size run, and testing in the marsh, on the deck, and on the trail.
Get the fit rightFrom brief to boxes in your warehouse
A new footwear line usually takes 8 to 14 months from an approved brief to delivery. We set the calendar on day one and hold it, because a late sample round can cost a selling season.
Developing a new boot or shoe means a brief and line plan, design and tech packs, lasts and tooling, two or three sample rounds with wear testing, final costing, then production and inspection.
Brief & program plan
Customer, use case, price and margin targets, line plan, calendar, factory shortlist.
2–4 wksDesign & specification
Concepts, tech packs, bill of materials, last selection, material sourcing.
4–8 wksLasts, tooling & first samples
Lasts finalized, outsole and midsole molds cut, prototypes built.
6–10 wksSample rounds & wear testing
Fit trials, lab tests, field wear tests, and costing negotiated round by round.
8–16 wksProduction & quality
Confirmation samples, purchase orders, inline and final inspections, shipping.
12–20 wksA small number of programs each year
Our best work happens with hunting, fishing, and outdoor brands that have earned their customers' trust and want footwear that keeps it.
A strong fit
- An outdoor brand with a loyal following, adding footwear or a new category
- A footwear brand that needs to fix cost, quality, fit, or a factory relationship
- Funded for the whole job: development, tooling, sampling, a first production run, and the marketing to sell it
- Standards high enough that "good enough" isn't
Probably not a fit
- A first product financed on personal credit or a home loan
- A one-off pair, a custom shoe, or a prototype with no plan to produce
- Choosing a factory on the lowest price above everything else
- No plan yet for how the product will be sold once it's made
"We don't want you to have to fit into some system. We answer the questions before they're asked. That's what makes us different."Iiley Thompson Sr.
Straight answers from the development floor
What it really takes to launch a footwear line
The budget lines, decisions, and timeline behind a first collection, before you commit.
TimelineThe footwear development timeline, phase by phase
Where the months go between a brief and a shipment, and where programs usually slip.
CostHow to lower footwear FOB cost without hurting quality
Where cost hides in a boot and the levers that move it without the customer noticing.
Tell us what you're building.
Share the brand, the category, and where you are today. If it's a fit, you'll talk directly with me. We're glad to sign your NDA before the first call.
- Phone
- (615) 229-6265
- Based
- Cannon County, Tennessee
- Factories
- United States and Asia