Florsheim Shoes
an American shoe brand
Florsheim Shoes is an American shoe brand founded in Chicago in 1892. It is a subsidiary of Weyco Group, which is owned by members of the founding Florsheim family.
History
Florsheim & Co. was founded in Chicago in 1892 by the German immigrant Sigmund Florsheim and his son Milton S. Florsheim.
The company marked its shoes with its own name and assisted stores in promoting them. By 1930, Florsheim was making women's shoes and had five Chicago factories and 2,500 employees, with 71 stores partly or entirely company-owned and 9,000 stores around the US selling Florsheims.
Milton Florsheim died in 1936 and was succeeded by his son Irving. In 1946, his younger son Harold became president with Irving Florsheim becoming chairman.
In 1953, International Shoe Company, the world's largest shoe maker, bought Florsheim for $21 million. Three years later, Florsheim became a division, continuing to operate as a separate entity.
“Florsheim Shoes” enters the record as an American shoe brand. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Florsheim, Shoes and American can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Florsheim Shoes” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Florsheim, Shoes and American provides the most credible route into that argument.
Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5461946. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1892, 1930, 1936 and 1946.
Overview language is designed for orientation and should not be treated as a substitute for the evidence cited beneath it. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Florsheim Shoes” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.