{"id":7726,"date":"2020-06-05T02:21:16","date_gmt":"2020-06-05T06:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/?p=7726"},"modified":"2020-06-05T02:23:32","modified_gmt":"2020-06-05T06:23:32","slug":"meet-the-seaside-park-man-who-invented-special-sandals-to-help-people-walk-on-the-sand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/2020\/06\/meet-the-seaside-park-man-who-invented-special-sandals-to-help-people-walk-on-the-sand\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Seaside Park Man Who Invented Special Sandals to Help People Walk on the Sand"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Jim Silvester knows the beach in Seaside Park like anyone who\u2019s been navigating the sand for seven decades.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore I was born, my grandparents bought a house in Seaside Park, and it\u2019s been in our family ever since,\u201d the Princeton native said. \u201cAll my vacations growing up \u2013 we were not rich people \u2013 was going to my grandparents\u2019 house at the Shore.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was like paradise, he said, and as occurs in many families, eventually Silvester had his own home in Seaside Park. Now retired, Silvester, 70, still comes to town after a long career in telecommunications and government in Atlanta. But it is his unique idea for special type of sandal<\/a> that makes him an extra special Shore resident who is helping to make the treasured beach accessible to all.<\/p>\n

The novel invention came from a long-lasting problem.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day after I was retired, I got my fishing gear together and walked up the street, over the dunes, and I looked out and saw nobody fishing even though it was a beautiful day. I couldn\u2019t see whether or not there were any birds working,\u201d he said. \u201cBut with my cart and my chair, I turned around and went back to my house because I didn\u2019t know if I could make it to the water\u2019s edge.\u201d<\/p>\n

The lack of fishing brought up some sad memories.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile I was walking home, I was reminding myself of my father and how he was when he was aging, having trouble at the beach,\u201d Silvester said. \u201cI thought, \u2018I have to find something.\u2019 I looked on the internet, in stores, and there was nothing, so I decided I\u2019d put some vinyl wallboard plates on the bottom of my sandals and took them to the beach to try it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: TSS)<\/p><\/div>\n

Silvester\u2019s prototype footwear \u2013 a three-strap sandal with a specially widened sole for added stability \u2013 was a hit with his friends. Now called \u201cThe Shore Shoe<\/a>,\u201d the sandal works in sand similarly to how a snowshoe works in snow. It distributes weight over a wider area so one\u2019s foot doesn\u2019t sink in the sand \u2013 especially the type of extra-soft sand found on Ocean County\u2019s northern barrier island.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople told me, \u2018you really have to bring that to market,'\u201d said Silvester, so he set out to do just that.<\/p>\n

Silvester spent much of his career designing and creating things, none of which were sandals. He worked for BellSouth and later AT&T alongside government agencies, carving out new spaces and alternatives for the placing of telecommunications equipment during major projects.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe would design and get AT&T\u2019s facilities, whether underground or on poles, out of the way so roads could paved, sidewalks could be laid or bridges could be built,\u201d he said, adding that he even had a hand in the city\u2019s street car project. He decided it would cost about $40,000 to patent his idea and bring it to market.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Just recently, Silvester obtained his design patent \u2013 drawn by a professional engineer \u2013 and has a utility patent pending. He registered an LLC and filled out all the paperwork for trademark protection. But the legal filings, he found, were just the beginning of a challenging process to bring footwear from his prototype to the marketplace. He wanted desperately to make the shoes in the United States, but it proved to be an impossible task.<\/p>\n

Silvester quickly found out that in 2018, when he was finally ready to manufacture sandals<\/a> in bulk, 97 percent of all shoes sold in the United States were made outside of the country.<\/p>\n

\u201cI could not find anybody that could do anything, in volume, of three-strap sandals in America because all of the products that are necessary to do that have to come from China anyway \u2013 the rubber, the velcro, the fabric, everything,\u201d he said. \u201cI looked into buying it in pieces, and even buying the machines to make it myself, but there was no way to get it all together.\u201d<\/p>\n

Silvester\u2019s tenacity did not let manufacturing trouble stand in the way, however. He met a local man who travels back and forth to Asia to oversee fabrication of items in several markets, and found a factory that could make The Shore Shoe. The process itself was lengthy since the shoes had to be loaded onto a container ship that sailed through the Panama Canal before off-loading in Savannah.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen it was picked up by rail and finally put in a truck to my warehouse,\u201d he recalled. \u201cWhat I thought was going to be $40,000 and a few months took $250,000 and three years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Silvester\u2019s work has paid off. The shoes are gaining a large following online, where they are sold at the official Shore Shoe website, and Silvester is looking to widen the market for his special niche of footwear. He\u2019s looking to license the design for orthopedic use, and also has his eyes on an unlikely \u2013 but almost obvious \u2013 market: the defense industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is potential here for our military service members who need to move quickly through the sand and work in the sand,\u201d Silvester said.<\/p>\n

For now, The Shore Shoe is mainly used for its originally-intended purpose of helping the elderly, disabled \u2013 or anyone who is carrying a lot of gear \u2013 walk on the beach. It\u2019s even become a social media hit, as an imprint of the brand\u2019s mascot, \u201cSandy the Crab,\u201d is left with each footstep. Pictures of the crab have been sent in from beaches across the world<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Shore Shoe, and its imprints, on the beach. (Photo: Daniel Nee)<\/p><\/div>\n

Silvester now uses his own shoes and is able to get more fishing time, even on those iffy autumn days.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll my life, young and adult, I\u2019ve always gone to the Jersey Shore,\u201d he said. \u201cI\u2019m glad I still can.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Silvester knows the beach in Seaside Park like anyone who\u2019s been navigating the sand for seven decades. \u201cBefore I was born, my grandparents bought a house in Seaside Park, and it\u2019s been in our family ever since,\u201d the Princeton native said. \u201cAll my vacations growing up \u2013 we were not rich people \u2013 was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7731,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[18,5],"tags":[1716,32,1715],"class_list":["post-7726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-seaside-heights","tag-jim-silvester","tag-seaside-park-nj-news","tag-the-shore-shoe"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/06\/shore_shoe_seaside_126-scaled.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pgsn9q-20C","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7726"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7726\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shorebeat.com\/lavallette-seaside\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}