In this episode we put the spotlight on the thriving boot and shoemaking scene in Indonesia. We do this together with Emil Rahmana Putra, founder of the dress shoe brand Winson Shoemaker and workwear boot brand Midas Bootmaker. Hear him talk about how he learned shoemaking from reading online, about how he sometimes go up in the middle of the night to make shoes, about the challenges for the quality footwear industry in Indonesia, and much more.
Winson Shoemaker is making the finest fully handmade dress shoes in the country, a true premium product of absolute top quality, while Midas Bootmaker focus on more affordable still excellent handmade Ready to Wear and Made to Order workwear boots. The company I work for, Skolyx, has been collaborating with Emil Rahmana Putra on a range of Ready to Wear Midas boots, and in recent years there are many around the world who have discovered the huge scene of especially workwear boot brands that comes out of Indonesia. The tradition of making boots by hand goes back to when the country was a Dutch colony, and today traditional shoe and bootmaking as well as other types of leather craftsmanship are relatively large industries for Indonesia.
Emil Rahmana Putra. Pictures: Winson
As you will hear, Emil Rahmana Putra is one of these obsessive souls that we have in the shoemaking world, we talked about how he ended up in the shoe industry and managed to build two successful brands, about how he to a large extent actually is a self-trained shoemaker, about his view on the success and challenges for the Indonesian boot and shoemaking scene, and much more.
Listen to the episode below, or in your preferred podcast player. All episodes of the Shoegazing Podcast can be found here. If you like the podcast, please give it a good rating or comment in your podcast player.
Read more about Winson and Midas in this article on Indonesian quality footwear brands, and more about the Midas Bootmaker x Skolyx collaboration here in this article.
Great listen, so nice to get this insight into all these different worlds of shoemaking, and here it with people’s own words.
Liam Fingal: Thanks, glad you like it!
Great podcast, Jesper! I truly enjoyed it. “I only compete with myself” Well-said, Emil. Its good to be aware of competitors around you. But too many brands get too hung up by their competitors and forgot about improving themselves. Great reminder from Emil. 🙂
Kelvin: Thank you! Yeah, he sure has his focus straight.
Jesper: Absolutely!