Goodyear welt

A Goodyear welt is a strip of leather, rubber, or plastic that runs along the perimeter of a shoe outsole.

[2][3][6][7] It has been noted by historians that Goodyear was a frequent visitor to the shoe factory of William J. Dudley, founder of Johnston & Murphy, where early work on sole stitching equipment was performed.

[9] The Goodyear welt process is a machine-based alternative to the traditional hand-welted method (c. 1500) for the manufacture of footwear, allowing them to be resoled repeatedly.

The final part of the shoe is the sole, which is attached to the welt by some combination of stitching and a high strength adhesive like contact cement or hide glue.

Welted shoes are more expensive to manufacture than those mass-produced by automated machinery with molded soles.