Shoemaker Mike Rancourt stands behind a rack of white suede bucks Monday, custom made for the U.S. Olympic team to be worn in the opening and closing ceremonies, July 26 and Aug. 11, in Paris. This is the fourth time Rancourt & Co. of Lewiston was contracted to make shoes for the U.S. Olympic team. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

LEWISTON — As athletes for Team USA look forward to the July 26 opening ceremony of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris, all 592 of them will be sporting handcrafted white suede bucks made by Rancourt & Co. of Lewiston.

A pair of white suede buck shoes sits on leather stock Monday morning at Rancourt & Co. in Lewiston. They are like the ones made for the U.S. Olympic team for the summer games in Paris, July 26 to Aug. 11. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Shoemaker Mike Rancourt said it’s something he’s very proud of for the community and his workforce. “My desire right now is to think in terms of how this positively impacts Lewiston and Auburn and the people that live here and grew up here in the shoe business or textile business, and for them to be able to reflect back on their aunts and uncles and family members who worked in those industries.”

Just after World War I there were some 8,000 people working in Auburn and Lewiston’s shoe factories, most of which were in Auburn. Today that number is well below 100, with 40 of them working for Rancourt.

Rancourt said they’ve been making shoes for Polo Ralph Lauren for 15 years and this makes the fourth time Rancourt was contracted to make shoes for the U.S. Olympic team. For the 2016 Olympics in Brazil, Rancourt made a red, white and blue boat shoe, in 2021, it was a white canvas sneaker for the Tokyo Olympics and in 2022 it was a black and red snow boot for the Beijing Olympics.

U.S. Olympic team footwear from previous Olympics, including a pair of size 20 Converses, left, are displayed Monday at Rancourt & Co. in Lewiston. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

Rancourt & Co. started working with Polo’s designers in January 2023 to complete the order and shipping deadline of May 2024. He can’t talk about how many pairs of white bucks they made for Polo Ralph Lauren or how much they cost. However, a pair of Pearl Nubuck shoes on the Rancourt website sells for $368. Rancourt was able to say they sold out on the Polo Ralph Lauren website for the Team USA Collection.

Many of the athletes don’t know if they qualify for the team until months or weeks before the actual games, which makes matching sizes a little bit of a guessing game. Rancourt said Polo ordered a range of sizes for men and women. “They’re ordering sizes on the women’s from size 5 all the way up to a size 17. And now the men’s is from a size 6 all the way up to an 18.”

One stipulation Polo Ralph Lauren made was that the shoes had to conform to the “Made in the USA” label, which states, “From Oregon to Maine, the Team USA Opening and Closing Ceremony uniforms are proudly made in American factories.”

The biggest difficulty was their material and color: white suede. “It’s just such a challenge,” Rancourt said Monday. “It’s 130 touches, right? It’s 130 steps in producing a pair of shoes like this, and the more people touch it, the more likely you’re going to get a stain on it.”

Shoemaker Mike Rancourt stands next to a rack of leather Monday morning in his Lewiston shop. For the fourth time, his company has made shoes this year for the U.S. Olympic team to wear at opening and closing ceremonies. Russ Dillingham/Sun Journal

With all 40 employees involved in the project, that meant taking some extra precautions. “Some had to wear gloves depending on what they were doing, and then we had this compressed air, and we would blow off all the dust at regular intervals along the path.”

Finding skilled craftsmen in shoemaking is virtually impossible these days, so Rancourt has been training new employees in the art of shoemaking. Immigrants from Angola and Democratic Republic of the Congo have been knocking on his door for the past six years and he said he’s happy to train them.

“They are excellent workers… they want to work,” he said. “And they’re responsible, you know, they’re family people. And so they come to work on a daily basis, happy to be here.”