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Debut of Green Shoes UNH helps an environmentally friendly footwear company get a foothold By Suki Casanave '86G

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The giant stone mill buildings along the Lamprey River in Newmarket, N.H., once rattled with the sounds of industry, churning out textiles, then shoes. Today, the mills are quiet. Condo dwellers live in some of the high-ceilinged buildings. Others have stood empty for a generation or more.

Lisa Nugent/UNH Photographic Services

But on the second floor of Newmarket's No. 5 Mill, entrepreneur Doug Clark '79 is cultivating a new idea—one he hopes will bring the sounds of shoe manufacturing back to New England, and also help to transform the industry's environmentally unfriendly reputation. The CEO of New England Footwear reels off the grim statistics: Of the 20 billion pairs of shoes manufactured each year, most eventually wind up in landfills. In the trash, their glue emits toxic volatile organic compounds. Shipping from overseas factories generates 2.25 million tons of carbon each year.

Clark is out to create a brand-new footprint for the shoe industry—and it starts with his concept for a GoLite shoe, partly made with a vegetable-based polymer that eliminates the need for glue and makes it instantly "greener." GoLite's "soft against the ground" technology puts a firm layer next to the foot and a soft layer against the ground, to absorb shock. "It's the best of a clog and a sneaker combined," says Clark, who also has a prototype for a soy-based shoe that can be added to your compost pile. "Our goal," he says, "is innovative green design that produces superior performance—and is made in America."

The company got a boost in 2011 from the Green Launching Pad, a joint venture between UNH and the state of New Hampshire designed to develop green technologies and create green jobs. Its $1.5 million in federal stimulus funding also supports a number of other companies, including Revolution Energy, which makes alternative energy more affordable, and Blue2Green, which promotes hydroelectric power production by restoring dams.

Clark traces his entrepreneurial passion for new ideas directly to a UNH history course. "Jeff Diefendorf challenged us to stop reciting and start thinking," says Clark, whose father, Charles Clark, was a professor of history at UNH. "I realized I could do more than read and rewrite—I could read and re-think. I could come up with a whole new idea."

That realization stayed with Clark, who started his career as a lab technician at Nike's sports research lab in Exeter, N.H. Clark moved to Reebok and then to Timberland, where he eventually became chief innovation officer of the company's Invention Factory. When he left Timberland in 2008 to start his own company, he was joined by two other former Timberland employees: Tom Montgomery '81, who oversees operations, and Scott Briggs '81, who handles sales and marketing. Clark's wife, Kim '00G, is vice president of human resources, and another alum, Holly Craig '93, is manager of sales support.

"Being an entrepreneur is a quest to do something no one's ever done," says Clark, "and to leave the world a better place." If you're making eco-friendly shoes, of course, the mark you make on history is, essentially, invisible. Success is measured not only in shoes produced, but in shoes recycled--shoes that decompose and vanish, without a trace.

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