After leading Softstar Shoes for the past two decades, Tricia Salcido faced a question that weighs on many business owners — how do you walk away from something you’ve built without watching it disappear?
For Salcido, the answer came through an employee-ownership trust — a model that has transitioned the Philomath-based maker of handcrafted minimalist footwear to 100% employee ownership. The move gives Softstar’s workforce of 30 a collective stake in the company’s future.
The decision was influenced by Salcido’s family history. Her grandfathers and father were all business owners, and she witnessed the emotional toll when those ventures changed hands.
“For my dad, especially, it was a little heartbreaking to see employees that he had spent a life working with, maybe either losing their jobs or working for a company that didn’t look the same anymore and treat people the same and become unhappy,” she said. “He saw assets that he built and made beautiful just kind of get run down and not looked and cared for. He’d see customers who just bemoaned how things had changed.”
Those experiences shaped her thinking about Softstar’s future. An outside buyer might have wanted only the brand or could have moved manufacturing overseas — changes that would contradict everything the company represents.
“The mission of the company is to continue having good local jobs and having healthy products that help people and are made in a sustainable way — that part doesn’t change,” said Salcido, who owned the business with husband, Sal.
The turning point occurred two years ago while researching exit strategy options. Salcido had heard of employee ownership models but initially concluded they wouldn’t fit a small company. Then she listened to a speaker from Project Equity, a consulting group that specializes in employee ownership transitions.
“They had a pretty clear path to employee ownership and I just got really inspired by it,” Salcido said. “It always sounded interesting and cool to me but it took education on my part to understand that it was a viable option for Softstar.”
The employee-ownership trust model offered the solution she was seeking. Oregon became the first state to authorize legislation establishing EOTs in 2023. The structure allows business owners to sell their company to a trust that holds ownership on behalf of all employees. Unlike traditional employee stock ownership plans, shares are not sold individually. Instead, the trust owns the company for employees’ collective benefit, and workers typically benefit through profit-sharing distributions rather than individual equity stakes.
“First of all, your team is taking over — there’s not going to be a change in personnel,” Salcido said. “Second, there’s this permanency thing … it’s there forever so there’s not this worry that it’s going to go away. And then you have the trust, which is just kind of there in perpetuity.”
Softstar, which dates back to 1985, moved from Corvallis to Philomath in early 2017 after renovating the former Phil-O-Rink skating rink on Main Street. The company employs 30 people, who are referred to as the “shoemaking elves.”
Project Equity connected Salcido with other Oregon companies that have completed ownership transitions via EOTs. Her team visited Hummingbird Wholesale, a natural foods distributor in Eugene, to see how the trust was working.
“That was very inspiring and also gives you more confidence in the whole thing,” she said.
The transition wasn’t without challenges. Salcido described the process as emotionally difficult.
“Selling your baby after 20 years is just hard — period — however you’re going to do it,” she said. “On a personal level, there’s that emotional piece to process.”
From a company perspective, significant organizational changes were necessary. Salcido realized she had worn too many hats for the employee-owned model to succeed.
“We promoted some key team members and we reorganized so that people were reporting to more and different people,” she said.
Employees also faced uncertainty about the unknown.
“People were excited about the concept but they were afraid because it’s very unknown and we had a lot of work to do in terms of restructuring and how we managed the company,” Salcido said.
Mark Martin, a Softstar employee who works in production and serves on the newly formed Trust Stewardship Committee, recalls the EOT idea first being presented to employees about a year ago.
“Trish has been very open about what it means, what it has entailed and getting it set up,” Martin said. “Of course, right now, the Trust Stewardship Committee is just in its infancy. None of us have ever done this before so we’re just kind of figuring it out as we go.”
The committee currently includes three management members and two employees, with the staff seats rotating every two years. Employees originally had eight nominations for the two representative positions, Martin said.
A retired business owner who says he works at Softstar “for fun,” Martin hasn’t seen operational changes yet — the transition only went into effect only a matter of weeks ago. But the psychological shift is already apparent.
“It definitely makes a difference in your mindset when you come in, for sure,” Martin said. “It makes you want to give just that little extra, which we all do anyway, but now it’s a little sweeter.”
The new ownership structure provides security that employees appreciate.
“It’s exciting to know that the owner just can’t sell it out from under us and we would have new ownership or something like that,” Martin said. “I love that she made that decision for us.”
Looking ahead, Martin sees potential for benefits like profit sharing and enhanced health coverage. But perhaps more importantly, he sees permanence.
“There’s the potential that this thing is here 200 years from now,” he said. “We could be in old photos on the wall — the first TSC board.”
Salcido continues with the company as chief financial officer.
