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About Oleyland Safety Footwear
For over 16 years, Oleyland has been safety footwear specialists for Ontario businesses, and we are major distributors for favourite brands including Terra, Kodiak, Redwing, Baffin, Blundstone, Timberland, Puma and more.
We have two safety shoe stores where you can try and buy our range of safety shoes and boots in person, a mobile corporate safety shoe service, and our new online store too.
Buy Safety Shoes In Person
Our main safety shoe outlet is in the former Underwoods Shoes store in Ingersoll and we are also at Main Street in Markdale Ontario. Come and see us - you'll find maps and full addresses on our Oleyland stores page.
Buy Safety Shoes at Work
For businesses, we also offer a mobile safety shoe service - we bring the shop to you! Our specialist safety shoe truck is stocked with a wide range of safety boots and shoes, so your staff is fitted by our professional shoe fitters on one day, without even leaving your premises! See our Mobile Safety Shoe Store page for full details.
Buy Safety Shoes Online
For 2011, we're selling our Canadian work boots and safety shoes online for the first time, with over 112 styles in stock that we are proud to say are "Made in Canada". Our new safety footwear e-store is an easy way to buy top quality work boots and steel toe shoes online, with delivery direct to your door, wherever you live in Canada.
Specialized Safety Footwear
Whatever kind of specialist safety shoes or boots you need, we either stock it already or can get it to you. We offer volume discounts for police and security forces, as well as non-metal footwear, non-slip shoes, and specialist rubber boots for fire crews, etc. if you can't find the safety foot wear you need on our site, give us a call and we'll source it for you.
Oleyland: A History
Allan Olsen is the second generation of the Olsen family from Denmark, well-known owners of a Ford tractor business in Markdale Ontario for 50 years. With 25 years in the tractor business behind him, Allan tried to retire, but without success! His first ‘retirement’ project was to build 3 retail units available for lease next to a car wash business he owned. No sooner had building started, when Allan was approached by the owner of Terra Footwear to sell their safety footwear from one of the units, as the Terra factory in Markdale was closing their own safety footwear outlet.
The Oleyland Outlet opened in February 1996, initially selling only Terra Footwear branded footwear. Over the years Allan expanded the product range and customer base of Oleyland to cover all of Grey & Bruce counties, and the Markdale store now has exclusive arrangements to provide footwear to many long-term customers.
Retirement? Not yet…
Still not tempted by retirement and a life on the golf links, in 2003 Allan purchased a long established family safety footwear business in Ingersoll Ontario, owned by the Underwood family for nearly 80 years. The new Ingersoll shoe store enabled Allan to expand to cover most of South Western Ontario with the addition of the warehouse, retail store and mobile footwear showrooms. Allan’s daughter, Jackie, joined him in the business and has become the driving force behind the sales and service that the company prides itself on. Together they operate the business on a daily basis.
Underwoods to Oleyland – building on tradition
Underwood’s Shoes was started in 1918 as a shoe repair and family footwear business by Sidney Underwood in Ingersoll Ontario. By the 1950s, his sons Ernie and Clifford Underwood had joined the business. Clifford brought new ideas to the business, and they ventured into the safety footwear business with 2 trucks to call on industrial customer. These were not the modern mobile salesrooms of today but rather more like milk trucks or mail trucks! In 1979, they built the current head office building and warehouse on the outskirts of Ingersoll, one of the first buildings in the area and on the corner of Ingersoll Street and Underwood Road which, of course, was named for the Underwood family.
Shortly after 1979, the Cami Automotive plant (now General Motors – Cami Assembly) was built right across the street from Underwood’s. All of the safety footwear for that plant was purchased from Underwood’s, and to this day Oleyland Safety Footwear is the sole supplier of safety footwear to Cami Assembly.
Oleyland: In store and on the road
Today Oleyland operates the two Ingersoll and Markdale retail stores, plus two safety footwear mobiles, to service their customers in South Western Ontario covering the areas north to Collingwood, south to Niagara Falls, east to Milton and west to Chatham. Oleyland now stocks over 350 different styles of CSA Approved footwear and have added work clothing and other safety accessories, while specializing in “Made in Canada” Safety Footwear, all available to buy right here in our new online safety footwear store.
