Port Washington, Wis.

“IT takes about a year until you’re good at this job, and three years until you know just about everything,” said Joe Merrill, a 34-year-old inseamer for the Allen Edmonds shoe company. In his hands he held a partly assembled black cap-toe dress shoe. He quickly spun the shoe around, working freehand, as a thin, flexible strip of leather was stitched along the bottom perimeter by a frighteningly forceful piece of machinery. It is a job he has done for the last three of his 11 years working in the factory.

“So I guess I know just about everything,” he said.

Not that long ago, there was a saying around this 50,000-square-foot plant, one of the last on the north shore of Lake Michigan that is still making shoes: When someone in his 60s retired, or died, there was one less Allen Edmonds customer. During the disastrous fourth quarter of 2008, in fact, the 90-year-old company laid off more than 8 percent of its work force. Its outlook was as dark as, well, shoe polish.

And yet, this year, Allen Edmonds is on track to produce 500,000 pairs of shoes, up from 350,000 last year. Since January 2010, the company has added more than 118 employees and increased its work shifts, the results of a turnaround that has surprised even veteran shoemakers like Mr. Merrill. More than 400 pairs of shoes pass through his hands in a day, in a process that involves 220 steps from leather to lace-ups. It can be tedious work, he said, but enjoyable because customers appreciate what he does: making handcrafted shoes that, once completed, will cost $325.

“The quality comes from the individual workman,” he said, picking up another shoe. “If bellbottoms can make a comeback, why not expensive shoes?”