MADYE’S SLIPPERS:
Scuffin’ her way to success
Cowboy boots aren’t the only shoe indigenous to West Texas
by C.W. (Bill) Smith
“N
ever underestimate the
power of a woman.” We
have heard that platitude
from childhood, along with “Behind
every successful man is a woman.”
Hubert Humphrey’s take on that
adage was “Behind every successful
man is a proud wife and a surprised
mother-in-law.” Sometimes, though, a
woman doesn’t have to have a man
standing in front of her...she is the suc-
cess and her man has nothing to do
with it.
That’s the way it was with Madye
Kersey Bailey. She was “just” a ranch-
er’s wife, living on a ranch near
Sanderson. She had spent most of her
married life living with her husband at
Ozona on the family ranch, raising
their two children and doing the thou-
sand things a hardworking ranch wife
has to do. They had leased a place
near Sanderson, but in the early 1940s
“droughty” times set in, all a precursor
to the drought that dried up most of
the ‘50s.
One Christmas, Madye decided to
make gifts for family and friends
instead of buying them. Like most of
the other ranchers in the area, their
extra money was going to the ever-
increasing ranch expenses, and what
with feeding and all, she didn’t have
much cash, or much choice.
But, what she did have in abun-
dance was a great talent for sewing and
a great big bag of cloth scraps. There
must be something she could do with
those scraps, she thought. What could
she possibly make with those little rem-
nants of cloth? She thought about how
cold her floors were that winter and
how it would be nice to have a pair of
warm house shoes. At once she real-
ized, here are my Christmas gifts!
They wouldn’t take much material
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Cenizo
and she could decorate them and
make them look nice.
As she thought about the design, she
realized that she didn’t know her
friends’ foot sizes, but she came up
with a solution...she would make them
large and backless so they could just
slip them onto their feet and take off.
Quickly the ideas flowed from her to all her kinfolk and friends, and it
didn’t take that long to do it. She
boxed them up, made a trip to town to
the post office, and soon the gifts were
on their way. I hope they like them,
she thought.
After Christmas, the letters began to
pour in. Her little slippers, which she
decided to call “scuffs,” were a huge
mind and soon she had made a pattern
for the parts, using her own feet as an
example, cut the material and sewed
them together. Then, she took a piece
of sheer material and bunched it
together into the shape of a big, poofy
flower and sewed it to the top of each
shoe. Now, she thought, that’s a cute
pair of shoes, if I do say so myself. As
she flexed her toes against the material
she thought, they are warm and com-
fortable, too.
Soon she had enough shoes to send success. Almost everyone wanted
more scuffs, both to wear and to give as
gifts, and they were willing to pay for
them. They had never seen anything
like this before, nor had they ever had
anything so comfortable and easy to
wear. And, they were cute, to boot!
And, if they needed to go somewhere
in a hurry, they only had to “jump”
into their scuffs and take off. Very
handy for the busy housewife!
As the year progressed, Madye
began to take more and more orders,
Fourth Quarter 2017
and it didn’t take long to realize that
she had a goldmine.
In 1948, they still weren’t doing well
on the ranch, so they let the lease go
and moved back to Ozona. In those
few, short years, her sideline had
grown by leaps and bounds and she
was verging on making as much as her
husband made with the ranch.
About 1950, they decided that they
needed to be in a bigger place to prop-
erly market her scuffs, so they moved
to San Angelo. The business had to
become more than just a sideline, so
they decided to take a name, the Bailey
Shoe Company.
By 1952, they were doing so well
that they took the next step and incor-
porated, doing business as Madye’s
Inc., and using Madye’s name as a
fancy, registered trademark. They
were in the big time, now, but sales
were still not what they should be,
since they only sold locally.
The big break came when their
daughter, Madye Jo, by chance visited
with a Fort Worth buyer, who was
looking for something new. She
described her mother’s product in
great detail, with bubbling enthusiasm.
After examining a pair of scuffs, he was
impressed enough to order 200 pairs
for a customer. This gave Madye the
exposure she needed. Her scuffs took
off and ran away with the competition.
As Madye’s scuffs gained fame in
local and Texas markets, they caught
the eye of the fashion experts at the
Tobe Report, savants in the fashion
industry whose “well-informed under-
standing and opinions on the direction
of fashion and consumer shifts made
(their) company’s services the most
highly sought-after in the (fashion)
industry.” Tobe wrote the book on
high fashion design.