Red Wing Shoe Company

Red Wing, Minnesota

When Red Wing Shoe Company was founded in 1905, many people still rode horses to work and a pair of boots sold for $1.75. Since then, the company has grown into America's most widely respected manufacturer of hard working boots and shoes around the globe. Red Wing has supplied boots to the U.S. military during two world wars and has been depicted in the work of renowned artists such as Norman Rockwell and Les Kouba. With four facilities producing the Irish Setter, Worx and Vasque footwear lines, Red Wing brands are recognized as symbols of American quality, craftsmanship, durability and comfort. Red Wing Shoe's primary mission is to provide quality boots and shoes across a variety of industrial and recreational markets.

The company's 75 sales agents nationwide rely upon Stampede Technologies' TurboGold 4.0 Client-to-Server software to cut costly connection times for their desktops and laptops in the field. As Manager of Applications Development for the company's sales force and automation and e-mail systems, Mike Bohlken was faced with growing demands on the network's NT and AS/400 system resources and escalating costs of data transfer to and from field agents. End-user frustration over connection times and access was a key issue. TurboGold v 4.0 was the solution.

"We needed to cut connection costs without degrading the end-user experience," said Bohlken. "For dial-in access to 800 numbers, we've realized a 65 percent cut in costs, and the overall system speed for data transfer has been increased by a factor of 3 times. This means salespeople spend less time waiting for system administration issues and can get on with the business of being highly productive."

TurboGold Client-to-Server is being used by Red Wing's sales force as a key tool for competitive advantage. By incorporating both push and pull technologies, TurboGold reduces traffic and increases bandwidth across the entire network. This technology allows Notes data to be "pushed" back to the Domino server at the same speed TurboGold exhibits when data is "pulled" from the Domino server. The result is accelerated Notes data in both directions-up to 5 times faster with the TurboGold accelerator. TurboGold runs as an add-in task on Domino servers, and is installed through a simple, automated Windows routine.

Bohlken says Stampede Technologies' award-winning, highly-scalable and robust architecture will allow Red Wing Shoes to confidently manage and grow their sales collaboration applications while containing costs and network resources efficiently, noting "TurboGold did everything it promised to do right out of the box with total end-user satisfaction."

Red Wing is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.redwing.com.