Intertek opens footwear testing lab in Bentonville

Global product tester Intertek has opened a facility in Bentonville, and it’s the first footwear testing lab for the company’s U.S. operation. The company said the lab will begin with 10 employees.

London, England-based Intertek operates more than 1,000 testing labs globally working for product manufacturers and retailers to put consumer items through stress tests to determine product quality.

The new lab in Bentonville will test footwear for retailers like Walmart. Steve Warner, director of business development at Intertek, said he has worked with Walmart for nearly two decades.

Warner is based in Connecticut but was in Bentonville for the recent opening event. He told Talk Business & Politics that Intertek conducts footwear testing in Asia where most of the manufacturing is based. He said Intertek has 23 U.S. labs to test consumer items sold in Walmart.

The Bentonville lab will work with the biggest footwear lab in China, the company said. He said the lab will do surveillance testing, pulling shoes off the shelves and testing them to see if they perform as good as they did in the pre-production testing phase. While the shoes are made in Asia and early testing will happen there, in-store testing will take place in the Bentonville lab.

Warner said having a location in Bentonville is in part to reciprocate the Walmart business but also to work with other vendors and retailers.

The lab utilizes more than a dozen machines to stress-test footwear from how durable the tread is on sneakers to how secure the grommets are for shoelaces. The shoes are tested for how well they hold up to rips and tears and sole separation. The lab’s suite of footwear testing equipment is designed to bring quality assurance closer to U.S. operations, improve efficiency, reduce lead times and ensure quality, safety and sustainability across every stage of the product life cycle, the company said.