 In 1895, the Brown Shoe Company factory had about six hundred employees who could make five thousand pairs of shoes and boots a day.The company competed as Brown shoes were sold throughout the Midwest at prices lower than New England shoes, and by 1900 the company was growing at a rate of $1 million a year.Four years later the company bought the rights to Buster Brown, a character developed by cartoonist Richard F. Outcault they would use for marketing.