
The tougher the competition gets – the more doubtful the marketing gets. One of the things that brands tend to use more and more in this day and age is dropping numbers on how long it takes to make the shoes, how long time that have been spent to develop new models, and similar. Numbers that are extremely exaggerated compared to reality.
After two relatively positive reflection articles here on the blog, especially the previous one about how we live in a golden age for quality shoes, it’s time to get back to the nagging. I’ve written about false or doubtful marketing several times, like in this article about how one shouldn’t be fooled by the “no middlemen” marketing, or here on the false and unnecessary devaluation of the words “handmade” and “handcrafted”. Another thing we see more and more of is brands claiming various numbers on how many weeks their shoes take to produce, you often read things like “each pair takes around seven weeks to make” or similar. And sure, the time that goes from when the first parts of a shoe is assembled to when they are placed in the shoe box may surely be seven weeks. But it’s a totally irrelevant number, since for almost all of those seven weeks the shoes are placed on a stand or on a trolley, just waiting for the next step in the production. But the time that is actually spent on working on the specific shoes, is not weeks. Not at all.
Goodyear welted shoes, which is what we mainly talk about here, shoes made in factories where hands mainly guide the shoes through various machines, are a relatively time consuming product to make, sure. But weeks? No way. If we compare to actual handmade bespoke shoes, where we include all the work with measurements and the lastmaking, fitting shoes, another work on the lasts, and then production of the final shoes, the makers that take the most time in the world are up in around two weeks actual work. And these shoes usually cost from at least €3,000 up to €6,000. It’s quite evident that shoes that are produced in larger quantities in much cheaper materials and sold at €200 or so would not take more than three times as long to produce.
How long time does it actually take to make a pair of factory-made Goodyear welted shoes then? It’s hard to say really, depends a lot on how you count. One of the most famous brands in England making premium Goodyear welted shoes, among the most expensive RTW there is, calculated that the actual time that someone held the shoes in the hands or they were placed in a machine in their factory was in total below an hour. That is low counted though, it does not include the time spent on for example the making of the parts that they have prepped, like welts, stiffeners, heels etc. does not include the time used on prepping stations and machines, and so on, and at sometimes the shoes need to pause for glues to dry etc. (to retain the shape of the last which is sometimes mentioned, is in reality never more than say a week, so it’s also basically irrelevant in this case, since no factory push shoes through for shorter times than this). But it says a bit. And either way, I’m sure we can all agree that the time that a shoe is in the factory doesn’t have anything to do with anything, it can be one week it can be two months, but how much time a shoe spends standing waiting there’s really no point in mentioning to anyone. The only reason it is mentioned is since it can fool those who don’t know too much to think that the shoes are more special than they are.
Another thing that brands sometimes promote is how long time they have spent developing something, stating that “we have spent over 1,5 years developing this model”, or two years, or three, whatever. This is even more irrelevant, especially since it’s mostly used by brands who don’t own their own factory, and the factory they work with is someone working for loads of different brands, perhaps apart from their own brand, and so on. If one were to measure how long of those years that actually was spent on the development, it would be an even less percentage of the time stated. Here there’s wait, wait, wait, wait and wait, then some stuff is done and you give feedback on this, then wait, wait, wait, wait and wait, and repeat. It is a totally different thing to when, say, Apple have a whole department working for a couple of years with developing a new product, or when a car manufacturer creates a new model. The shoe brands want their marketing to connote to the just mentioned things, even if it has just as little to do with each other as a computer has to a shoe.
It’s ironic that the ones who believe these falsities and exaggerations, are the ones who would be more or less equally impressed if you only said exactly the truth. The making and development of Goodyear welted shoes are impressive and worth to pay for as it is.
I guess the success of Goodyear welted shoes is based on a) the development of key machines that quickly stitch welts and soles to the upper and b) the skill of many key artisanal individuals. I look at the best Goodyear welted shoes I own (in fact, I don’t own any hand-welted shoes) and I’m very happy with them. I guess another key part of the success of ‘mass produced quality shoes’ is the fact there are options to choose a last shape that suits you. I’m guessing the English maker you cited in the article (in relation to the time taken to make the GW shoe) is either Crockett and Jones or Edward Green? Or am I wildly off?
Cheers
Tony
The physical 1-hour production time for Goodyear welted shoes is quite interesting comment and seems about right. What about the actual Goodyear application process, about 10 seconds per side? I don’t think marketing people can work well with that, haha.
Another one is how long the shoes sit in the last for. Some boast up to 2 weeks on the last, but as you say, it’s all just queuing and waiting times, 2 days is all that’s really required. I read somewhere once that athletic shoes stay on the last for only 15 minutes, I guess it could happen with Goodyear.
Anyways I love this article as I remember watching a youtube video on a new uniform design for Airline crew. The designer continued to boast that it took them 5 years to complete like it was something to be proud of. ha.
Anthony: Yeah could probably say something like that. Regarding the brand, I prefer not to disclose it. But no matter, it’s about the same in all factories, so nothing special really.
Don: Regarding the time on the last, I wrote this reply to a comment on the topic on Facebook: “It’s basically a myth, sometimes spread by companies for the same reasons as the article examples. If you wet last a day or two is enough on the last (until dry). Lasted dry a bit longer is good, but basically there’s no difference whatsoever no matter what leather after say a week (exact time may be a bit debated). This goes for both machine lasted and hand lasted.”
Also updated the article with a brief mention on this.
Hehe yeah, what that long developing times in cases like this actually means is that you are far away from your factory and production, sort of, nothing to be proud of really.
Don: That comment about the airline uniform design taking 5 years makes me think of those Kickstarter campaigns that boast about the fact that they had over a hundred prototypes before settling on the finished product. Who knows how they were counting and whether that number actually correlates to anything real but if true it just means they didn’t know anything about the product category when they started. There’s nothing wrong with iteration over multiple versions but if it takes that many before someone decides a product is “good enough” they’re either clueless, unsure of what they want, or incompetent.
I’d be much more impressed impressed with their expertise if they said “we got it right on our first try and perfected it the second time around,” but that doesn’t seem to have the same effect on sales because people think they barely had to put in any time (effort).
Nothing wrong with a bit of fact-checking Jesper. It, you serve us well.
Regarding one of your “nagging” (ha ha, not at all) I always thought a middleman was a distributor who purchases goods from the manufacturer and then onsold them to retailers? I guess there’s a distinction here between businesses that simply white-label shoe models from the shoe manufacture as opposed to businesses that have invested time and money on designs, lasts, and IP, etc. Either way, keep up the great work.
David: Yeah exactly. And it also shows that you are far way from where things are actually done, for a factory developing their own stuff it’s very rarely any need to do tons of versions of things since you are there modifying things as its done.
James S: Cheers 🙂 I guess there’s different definitions of middlemen, in my view it’s anyone who are between the production and the customer, and when we talk the “disruptors who sell directly to the consumer” there’s as many “men in the middle” in that business model as for all who buy a brand directly from the factory. Ironically, the one who sell the brand would have a lower upcharge on things than the one who invest “time and money on designs, lasts, and IP, etc”, so in that regards they have a higher overhead than the retailer buying a brand directly from the factory.
Either way, with the small businesses that shoe companies are, many modify things also when buying a brand that isn’t their own. And as an example, we at Skolyx who sell our own brand, Yanko and TLB Mallorca, we of course have a bit more free movement with our own brand, but we pick the models and lasts etc of Yanko and TLB as well (now I’m not taking into account that we work closer than normal with the TLB factory with for example developing Artista together, I’m talking as if we were a regular retailer), it’s the case for many brands in this industry. And the margins are the same for our own brand (which is exactly the same as the “distruptive directo customer brands”) and Yanko and TLB.
The other one that crops up a lot is “these shoes / this watch / this whatever was constructed using over x hundred individual steps”.
Which, sure, that sounds impressive. But how many people could actually tell you what the “normal” number of steps to construct any given product is? I probably have a marginally better understanding of how shoes are made than a lot of people, but I’ve got no idea how many discrete “steps” are involved. Do you just automatically double the number of steps anyway since shoes come in pairs?
So it’s just a figure that sounds impressive, but is meaningless without context.
Sam: Yup, true. I guess only point with it is that it should sound like a lot, and combined with stating that the shoes take many weeks to make it should sound like something super mega special 🙂