IF a death notice had been drafted for the Florsheim Group in 2001, the year that the company went on life support, it might have read something like this:

A well-known company, whose shoes outfitted generations of American boys and men for school, work, weddings and funerals for most of the 20th century, died yesterday. Once a small, profitable and highly regarded family business, Florsheim, owned for the past 50 years by outside investors, succumbed to loads of debt, lackadaisical vision and outdated styling. Florsheim, 110 years old, is survived by a slew of much hipper brands.

But if the famous old shoemaker was once on the verge of being shoved six feet under, how has it come to pass that Thomas Florsheim Jr., 49, a great-grandson of the company’s founder, is touting Florsheim’s new fall selection? As Mr. Florsheim strolls around his Manhattan hotel room — refitted to resemble a shoe store — he is in full pitchman mode, parsing the nuances of soles, lasts and uppers. He’s also contrite about Florsheim’s failures.

“Look, we know what people think when they think of us: they think of wing tips, the capped toe, the really brogue shoes and that we had gotten to a point where we were very stodgy,” he says, fingering racks filled with the company’s new line — some 80 percent of which, he says, has been overhauled over the last three years. “But we’re moving the needle in terms of style.”

Five years ago, when Apollo Management, then the majority owner of Florsheim, put the shoemaker into bankruptcy, the company was in shambles: most of its 200 retail stores were losing money, licensing deals with designers like Joseph Abboud had proved a bust, many of its factories were operating at well below capacity and its product pipeline was outdated and shoddy. That’s when the Florsheims — the family, not the company — did a bit of, well, sole searching.