Roger Katz said his father and brother formed a balanced partnership.
“My father was a production genius; he knew where to create product and source material,” he said in a phone interview. “But he had no idea about marketing. My brother knew how to create a brand and presence.”
But he said they sold the company to Reebok because his father was “getting older” and his brother “really had no life” and was approaching burnout.
Besides his brother, Mr. Katz after his wife Dasa Katz and his child Lee.
While mr. Considering returning to the shoe business, Katz attended a 2013 trade show in Las Vegas where he met Werner Wyrsch, a former Rockport executive preparing for his retirement.
“He said, ‘Let’s walk around,'” Mr. Wyrsch said in a telephone interview. “He picked up a shoe here and a shoe there, import 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 soon started Samuel Hubbard, with Mr. Wyrsch serving as senior vice president of product development and sourcing. The company is a kind of Rockport 2.0, with an ongoing emphasis on lightweight, casual comfort, but with more luxurious European leathers and advanced technology.
Roger Katz, an architect who designed a distribution center for Rockport and his first store, in Marlboro, Massachusetts, said he was not surprised to see his brother return to the shoe business.
“Bruce tried a lot of effort in between, and to be honest, he didn’t have the kind of success he wanted,” he said. “He got to a point where he still wanted real success. He spoke openly about the only place where he was really successful was in shoes.”
