Report – Singapore Super Trunk Show 2026

Last weekend the first Singapore super trunk took place, and what a day it was! Lots of visitors, great atmosphere, exciting stage happenings including the Asian Championships of Shoe Shining, and more. Here’s a summary from the day with lots of photos.

 

We in the organising group – Jesper Ingevaldsson of Shoegazing, Justin FitzPatrick of The Shoe Snob blog, and Kirby Allison of the YouTube channel and webshop – have had plans of doing an event in Asia for quite some time. But the pandemic sort of put it all on hold, so the U.S. version was postponed and in turn it took some time for the Asian one to come into place. Last week though it was finally time. With great help from the people at CNES who are based in Singapore, we’ve found a great venue in central singapore, the Warehouse on River Promenade, where we gathered no less than 19 men’s quality shoe and menswear exhibitors. The space is open with high ceilings, one big space for exhibition, the large stage area and a coffee and drinks corner, then in the back we had two small rooms for a small stage and workshop area.

When we opened the doors at 11am it started off a bit slow though, and we got a bit nervous, until the locals said that Singaporeans will come after lunch, and they sure did. We didn’t have anyone clicking at the doors, so hard to say for sure, but maybe up towards 1,000 people came throughout the day. Quite many had also travelled in from other parts of Asia, likely at least 20% of the visitors, which was what we hoped for. And it was great to see the enthusiasm, and how Singaporeans were happy to have a big event like this on home turf.

We continued the appreciated 15 minute stage sessions every full hour that we introduced in New York last autumn. Here Ash Samsudin of Metiers Sol showed how to shine shoes with your fingertips, Bridlen’s Affan Mohamed talked about how one run a shoe factory, Yuya Hasegawa of Brift H teached how one do a quick mirror shine, and we had a panel talk about the Asian quality shoe industry with Alan Lee of CNES and Winson’s / Midas’ Emil Rahmana Putra. These sessions with a smaller audience gets really engaging and interesting with often many questions.

Together with Saphir Ash Samsudin also held three Shoe shine masterclasses, where visitors were to shine their own shoes with products from Saphir and instructions and first hand guidance by a former shine world champion. Not only those who where part of the actual workshop were in the room, often a bunch of other people also followed to pick up shoe care knowledge.

Then of course the big happening of the day was the first Asian Championships of Shoe Shining. Given that all world champions since the start in 2017 have been from Asia, we knew the battle would be fierce. In the final we had Naoki Hayashida from Japan, Tyler Tran of Vietnam, and Niko Cho from Singapore. In front of a big crowd they had 20 minutes and two different Saphir Medaille d’Or wax polishes to make a Bridlen oxford as shiny and good looking as possible. Superb results from all three, after a very long jury overhaul Tyler Tran was announced the Asian champion, with Niko Cho as silver medallist and Naoki Hayashida with bronze.

As mentioned, the exhibition hall here is a relatively big, open one. In the inner part we had a lounge area where Old Moon Spirits served free drinks to the visitors during the day, and That One Coffee sold great tasting coffe and tea. The front 4/5 of the room consisted of exhibitor tables with the same floating set-up as we have in London, which means there’s no table between brand representatives and visitors, creating a more open and social atmosphere. The two largest spaces were held by our Platinum sponsors.

Saphir Medaille d’Or who is seen as the number one premium shoe care brand in the world had loads of products on display and for sale. They also took the time to explain for visitors how many of their products work and what can be achieved by them, especially important for some of their more specialised products in their extensive range.

The Indian shoe manufacturer Bridlen always manage to have some new interesting things to bring to all their super trunk shows. This time they showcased a lovely collab with the Japanese patina artist Craft Infinity, with shoes painted with special Japanese dyes in a wide variety of patina’s. I was especially impressed with a silver metallic one that had a really natural look, not the synthetic feel one often see from metallic paints. All these will be available to pre-order on their site soon.

As Gold sponsors we’ve had Sanyo Yamacho from Japan. A brand that’s well-established as one of the premium brands making Goodyear welted shoes in Japan, with really solid make and great attention to detail. Classic and classy stuff. CNES is one of Vietnam’s largest producers of quality men’s footwear, hand welted, Goodyear welted, Blake and more. They offer an impressive wide range of styles. Their new display taking pride of being a Vietnamese brand was nice to see.

Then of course we’ve had a bunch of Silver exhibitors showcasing their stuff. We’ve had the footwear brands Fumu, Ichigo Ichie, Johnny Works, Oct Tenth, Renav Goods, Twinkima.G, The Last Shoemaker, Winson and Yearn, with Yeossal offering both shoes and clothing. Fully focused on clothing we had Camps de Luca, Common Suits and The Compendium. Then Idé Homme brought their socks, and Shinki Hikaku their Shell Cordovan leathers and leather accessories. Some photos of all these below.

We want to thank all who were part of making this such a wonderful day, and we do plan to come back next year!