Hydrolysis

Boot soles rot if they are stored for a long time. This is called Hydrolysis. Moisture gets into the cushion soles and then microbes eat the soles and they disintegrate. This is a good thing when your old boots go to the tip. It's a bad thing if your boots are new.

As retailers we do things to stop Hydrolysis:

We only buy new boot stock from reputable manufacturers. All our boots are date stamped so we know that they are not old stock. We installed 2 air conditioners in our boot section to reduce the moisture in the air in our shop on humid days. We limit our boot suppliers. We keep a limited range of boots and reorder twice a week, so we never have old stock sitting around.

As consumers you can avoid Hydrolysis in your boots by:

Wear your boots regularly, don't store them for months or years without wear. (Regular wear stops the boots taking on moisture) They can last up to 10 years. Only buy boots from busy stores that sell lots of footwear (so you aren't buying old stock.)

Only buy boots from air conditioned premises. If the retailer doesn't know about Hydrolysis find one who does. Because we have a management plan to stop Hydrolysis all our boots have full warranty. But we cannot accept return boots after 8 weeks because we cannot guarantee that they have been kept air conditioned.