Roger Katz stated that his father and brother shaped a balanced partnership.
“My father was a manufacturing genius; he knew where to make product and source materials,” he stated in a telephone interview. “But he had no concept of marketing. My brother knew how to create a brand and a presence.”
However he stated they offered the corporate to Reebok as a result of his father was “aging out” and his brother “really had no life” and was nearing burnout.
Along with his brother, Mr. Katz is survived by his spouse, Dasa Katz, and his youngster, Lee.
As Mr. Katz contemplated his return to the shoe enterprise, he attended a commerce present in 2013 in Las Vegas, the place he encountered Werner Wyrsch, a former government at Rockport who was getting ready to retire.
“He said, ‘Let’s walk around,’” Mr. Wyrsch stated in a telephone interview. “He picked up a shoe here and a shoe there, imports from Vietnam and Cambodia, and he said: ‘This is terrible, let’s do it again. Let’s show them how to make shoes again.’”
Mr. Katz quickly began Samuel Hubbard, with Mr. Wyrsch serving as senior vice chairman of product growth and sourcing. The corporate is a type of Rockport 2.0, with a continued emphasis on light-weight, informal consolation however utilizing extra luxurious European leathers and superior expertise.
Roger Katz, an architect who designed a distribution heart for Rockport and its first retailer, in Marlboro, Mass., stated he was not shocked that his brother returned to the shoe enterprise.
“Bruce tried a lot of endeavors in between, and to be candid, he didn’t have the type of success he wanted,” he stated. “He reached a point where he wanted another real success. He openly talked about the fact that the one place he was really successful was in shoes.”
