For those looking to make a bargain, apart from regular sales an alternative that in many ways are more favourable is buying subs, where some flaws means the shoes can’t be sold at full price. Spanish Carmina sell their seconds on Ebay at a 50% off the RRP, learn more here.
All shoe manufacturers make a certain percentage of seconds, shoes that for one or several reasons can’t be sold at full price due to some quality issue, that’s the nature of manufacturing. These are shoes that are still wearable, of course, and when it comes to Goodyear welted shoes the value is certainly still enough to make it worth selling them off. Also from a sustainability perspective it would be crazy to just throw these away, and unlike when you buy on regular sales, where the brands and retailers would loose out on potential money (read more about the problems with the increase of sales and how it hurts the quality shoe industry in this article), it’s highly beneficial for the shoe brands to get in money also for these subs. How brands sell them vary a lot, some have their own factory outlets, some sell them off in bulk to other outlet companies, some have them part of regular sales, some sell them off on market places online, etc. One company who use the latter to get rid off their subs is the Spanish company Carmina.
A maker like Carmina who produce large quantities every year will inevitably end up with quite a large amount of seconds. Pictures: Carmina
The account Shoemaker1866 on Ebay is Carmina’s own, which only sell subs from the Spanish shoe manufacturer. At the moment there’s 130 pairs available. Obviously varies a lot on models and sizing, and how large the quality errors are, but what’s good is that they show photos of all visible things so one can relatively easily make an assessment if one think the flaw or flaws are problematic or not. In most cases calf leather shoes goes at €200, while cordovan leather shoes are priced at €350, so basically half the RRP. Could definitely be worth keeping an eye out here, new shoes are added all the time, to see if something of interest becomes available for a bargain.
