The elves have been tinkering with the shoes again. It could be the fresh spring air, the post-sale high or the sugar rush from Elf Hava’s cookies, but for whatever reason, our staff is feeling creative. The latest innovation is our RunAmoc Dash with a tough leather sole. We’ve experimented with tough leather soles on our […]

We had some special guests visit our workshop last week. A class from the local Benton Center Parent Preschool Co-op dropped by for a field trip to learn how shoes are made. Elves Larkin and Tesla guided the curious youngsters through our whole production line and gave them a firsthand look at leather cutting, sewing, […]

“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, […]