The past couple of decades professional shoe shining has lift itself to higher level, and become an acclaimed craft in itself. Not least in Asia this development has boomed, where one of those who’ve been part of the development is John Chung who runs the shoe shine bar and more Mason & Smith in Singapore.
For this episode I met John Chung, who runs the shoe shine bar, shoe and leather goods repair shop and shoe store Mason & Smith in Singapore. He won the world championships of shoe shining in 2018, and has for many years been an ambassadeur for professional shoe shining in particular and caring for your shoes in general. Mason & Smith has not least been pioneers with shoe shine videos on Instagram and TikTok, reaching a very wide audience globally.
John Chung.
I talk with John about how he decided to skip university to instead refurb and sell thrift store shoes to eventually build up his shoe shine business, about why Asians dominate the professional shoe shining scene, about what professional shoe shiners do differently to regular people caring for their shoes, and 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.
