In the Workshop

“Play is essential to our social skills, adaptability, intelligence, creativity, ability to problem solve, and more. Play is hardwired into our brains—it is the mechanism by which we become resilient, smart, and adaptable people.” —From Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul, by Stuart Brown, M.D. & Christopher Vaughan […]

For many years now, the largest shoe ever built by the Soft Star elves has been a custom-made adult size 16. Today, we completed an order for a size 15.5 Rambler. The finished product fell just a tad short of breaking the record, but it was still the largest shoe seen by most of the […]

Our leather-cutting elves have the privilege of working in the most colorful room in the Soft Star workshop. At present, we have over 50 different colors we use to make our shoes in smooth, suede and shiny leather (plus quite a few animal-free options). Since many of these colors need to be stocked in varying […]

We elves very much enjoy the connections we have with our customers. It makes our work more satisfying and rewarding, but it also helps us grow as a company. As a small Oregon-based business, we don’t have an advanced testing facility or a team of researchers analyzing data. Instead, we rely on our customers’ feedback […]

The term “Mary Jane” is commonly used to describe a particular style of women’s footwear, but have you ever wondered how this shoe received its name? We found the answer: In 1902, cartoonist Richard Oucault created a comic strip called Buster Brown, which quickly became very popular. The comic portrayed the antics of Buster Brown, […]

Although our trusty Soft Star website has served us well for many years, the time has come for an upgrade.  In February we will launch the new and improved www.softstarshoes.com.  Our revised site will not only be faster and easier to navigate, but will also offer a fresh new look and many useful features. You’ll […]

Our 2011 holiday season has been our busiest ever! On Monday this week, we broke our record for the highest number of packages shipped in a single day. Elf Cindy had to call our local post office to tell them they would need a bigger-than-usual vehicle for our pickup. Our local postal carrier happily obliged, […]