Liberty Shoes

Liberty Shoes Limited (LSL) is an Indian shoe company, based in Karnal, Haryana.

Established in 1954, the company presently produces 50,000 pairs of footwear a day through its six manufacturing units, sold through 6,000 multi-brand outlets and 350 exclusive showrooms, and has a presence in 25 countries, with 50 showrooms outside India. Adesh Gupta became the CEO of LSL on 16 July 2001.

History
Liberty Shoes was founded by Dharam Pal Gupta, Purshotam Das Gupta and Rajkumar Bansal by the name of Pal Boot House in 1954. Liberty Shoes first associated in India for distribution and exclusive showrooms with Balbir Singh & Son's in the year of 1983, which was later named as Naruson Sales Corporation.

The company was incorporated on 3 September 1986 as a Public Limited Company and obtained the Certificate of Commencement of Business on 11 March 1988. The company has been set up to manufacture and sell leather and non leather shoes, leather shoe uppers and leather garments Presently the company is engaged in the manufacturing of leather and non leather shoes.

It has also set up a joint venture in Russia to manufacture shoes in 1991 under the name of M/S Liberty &Go, with M/S Gorky Production & shoes Unit, Gorky. The Company is marketing its product nationally and internationally under the brand name "LIBERTY" and is well established in the national and international market. The company has entered into an agreement with one of the group firms M/S Liberty Enterprises for using the established brand name "LIBERTY".

The company has commenced its commercial production for non leather shoes on 25 December 1993. Initially one direct injection soiling machine was installed with a capacity of 50000 pairs per annum on single shift basis .The second direct injection soiling machine was installed in March 94.From the commencement of commercial production till 31 March 1994, the company has been operating on full capacity. As the promoters are in this line for the last five decades, the company is confident of maintaining this level of operations in the future. The company has been promoted by P.D.Gupta and R.K.Bansal and belongs to the LIBERTY Group.

'Force 10', Liberty's first sub-brand, was launched in August 1990, a time when a casual footwear wave sweeping the Indian market. By 1994-95, Force 10 became Liberty's flagship brand in value, notching up sales of Rs 32 crore, it the coming years, it not only help the company establish its name the domestic footwear market, but also paved the way for nine other sub-brands and a firm foothold the mass family footwear segment, till now led by Bata, now Liberty was the country's second largest footwear company after it.

The company saw major expansion in the 2000s, both in retail and manufacturing bases, leading to a sharp growth, in the year 2002-03, the company posted a retail turnover of Rs 400 crore. Also in April 2003, the Liberty Group underwent an important restructuring and its product portfolio was also revamped. As a part of the restructuring process, the company split its manufacturing and retail business in January 2004, with Liberty Shoes as the holding company for its shoe business and a subsidiary Liberty Retail Revolution Ltd for its retail business, which established a new retail channel through "Revolutions Stores", which were set up in Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad and Chennai. At the same time it ventured into high fashion, by tying up with fashion designers including Rohit Bal, Rajesh Pratap Singh, Rina Dhaka, Rohit Gandhi, Ashish Soni and Suneet Verma to develop footwear to match their clothing lines.

LSL produces more than 50,000 pairs of footwear a day covering virtually every age group and income category. Products are marketed across the globe through 150 distributors, 400 exclusive showrooms and over 6000 multi-brand outlets, and sold in thousands every day in more than 25 countries. After 65 years of its existence, today Liberty produces footwear for the all age groups. Currently, LSL is headed by Mr. Adesh Gupta as its CEO. It is a part of the 'Liberty Group' which includes other associate companies - Liberty Retail Revolutions Limited and Liberty Whiteware.

Manufacturing
Liberty's manufacturing base includes six facilities spread across the numerous states, two in Gharaunda and Liberty Puram (Haryana) where its primary and the largest manufacturing units are situated, Paonta Sahib, (Himachal Pradesh) with two units and Roorkee (Uttarakhand). The company has avoided locations in the conventional Indian shoe manufacturing locations such as Agra, Kanpur, Noida, Chennai etc.