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There’s branches of people within “the classic shoe world” who are skeptical against factory-made Goodyear welted shoes in general and all types of shortcuts from making “the best shoes possible”, which ideally would be fully handmade bespoke of absolute best quality. Thing is, this industry, all of it, needs to have those who take these shortcuts – here’s why.
An increasing amount of new brands are introduced which all market themselves as offering shoes comparable to much higher-priced shoes, since they “cut out the middlemen”. This, is more or less just false advertising. These brands themselves are the middleman, and the difference in actual margins compared to the traditional quality shoe brands are small. Here’s why.
It’s certainly a special spring that we all have been through. The impact that the coronavirus has had on the whole society is huge, and for an industry like the manufacturing of quality shoes, it’s meant a whole new reality. Here’s an overview of what has happened to this industry this far, and some thoughts on what might come next.
The world of quality shoes is in general doing well in many regards when it comes to being sustainable and environmentally friendly. There’s still several areas where things can be improved though, some thoughts around this in today’s article.
Cheaney has more than doubled their turnover and earnings the past decade, after Jonathan and William Church took over the company and moved it away from private label production to producing shoes under its own name, and also selling these themselves to a larger extent. Hear about this topic, the Prada buyout of Church’s, Brexit and more in episode 10 of the Shoegazing Podcast.
The Asian quality shoe industry, outside Japan, is much more evolved than what most Westerners tend to believe. And more is happening – fast. In this episode, we hear shoe expert Robin Chang, founder of the Taiwanese shoe store Oak Room, talk about Asian-made classic shoes.
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How do makers of classic shoes succeed internationally? What are the important success factors, and the pitfalls? How strong is the British shoe heritage around the world nowadays, and what do the growing competition from Spanish, Portugese and Asian-made welted shoes mean? These are some of the topics that Richard Utting, Export Manager at one of Englands largest makers of Goodyear welted shoes, Loake, talk about in episode 8 of the Shoegazing Podcast.
Next year, a new, comprehensive and very practical shoemaking education will start in the US, which will enable more people to easily get into the desired place in the shoe industry without having to piece together their own education.
The big luxury fashion houses often get a lot of criticism from us in “menswear” and classic shoes. Sometimes well deserved, but they also do a lot of good. In fact, as things stand today, we probably would have had significantly fewer really good shoes in the world without them.
For the second episode of the Shoegazing Podcast, I met the famous Japanese bespoke shoemaker Yohei Fukuda, who besides making some of the finest shoes in the world, also have been very successful with creating a brand image, something quite difficult especially for small bespoke shoemakers. It’s around this topic we focused our discussion.
