Bloch (company)

Bloch

Industry	Manufacturing
Founded	1931
Founder(s)	Jacob Bloch
Headquarters	Sydney, Australia
Products	Dance supplies
Website	www.bloch.com.au

Bloch is a manufacturer of pointe shoes and other types of dance shoes (including tap, jazz, ballroom, and Latin American), dance costumes, and dance fashion accessories.

History

The Bloch company was founded by Jacob Bloch, a cobbler who emigrated from Europe to Australia in 1931 and began making shoes in a workshop where he lived.^[1] Bloch began making pointe shoes in a workshop in Paddington, Sydney in 1932, when he noticed a ballet dancer struggling to stay en pointe and offered to make her an improved pair of shoes. Later, he made customised ballet shoes for Tamara Toumanova, David Lichine, Helene Kirsova, and other visiting Russian ballet dancers.

Over time, the company expanded its products to include dance and street apparel and accessories.^[1] Today, Bloch's corporate headquarters are located in Sydney, Australia, with a European head office in London. It operates one flagship store and 17 other stores in Australia, and one store in London; all other sales are conducted through an international network of independent retailers.

Pointe shoe manufacturing

Bloch employs a pointe shoe manufacturing method known as turnshoe. Bloch pointe shoes use three different recipes of paste in the toe box.^[2] The standard paste, "paste A", is a firm, hard paste, that was formulated to withstand varying heat and humidity. "Paste B" is more malleable and thus allows the shoe to more quickly mold to the shape of the foot; because of its high malleability, this paste breaks down (i.e., shoe structural support degrades) faster than paste A. A third recipe, known as "TMT™" or "Thermo-Morph Technology" paste, is a heat activated material that allows the shoe to be molded to the foot when subjected to directed hot air from a hair dryer.^[3]

References