What Mongrel is known for

Australian-made work-boot brand tracing to a 1930 Surry Hills, Sydney bootmaking business; still family-run by the Cloros family and manufactured at its own factory in Auburn, New South Wales, not Victoria.

Mongrel is an Australian work-boot brand whose roots go back to 1930, when bootmaker Stanley Cloros established a shoe-repair and handmade-footwear business in Surry Hills, Sydney, selling boots at local markets. During the Depression his son William Basil Cloros bought machinery from liquidation auctions to launch a full-scale operation, Victor Boot Company, which produced military boots through the Second World War and later grew into Victor Footwear Pty Ltd, expanding into work and casual footwear at a larger St Leonards facility by the 1960s. The Mongrel name was introduced in 2000 as a new boot style built on the company's Australian manufacturing heritage; it grew to become the company's primary brand. A signature innovation, the side-zip 'ZipSider' work boot, launched in 2006. Between 2006 and 2008 the company built a dedicated manufacturing facility in Auburn, in Sydney's western suburbs, deliberately keeping production in Australia while many competitors moved manufacturing offshore. As of 2020 the business marked 90 years of operation with three generations of the Cloros family still involved, and continues to manufacture boots -- including its K9 range and ZipSider lines -- at the Auburn factory today.