Neat Shoes

During this morning's perusal of the news,  a multimedia article from New York Times,  "Fashion on the Street - Some Imagination".  It's a multimedia slide show, so may take some time to load all the photos, you may see blank screen while the narrator/author Bill Cunningham describes what he sees.

While everyone's expecting a down year in the footwear industry, it's interesting to note that some companies are experiencing record sales or up years. Again, the key is to produce something that people want.  Fashion shoes are by and large an emotional purchase, and how those shoes are designed and marketed plays a big part in a brands success.

Those of us in the footwear industry do tend to complain, you rarely hear a person say "It's been great, never better"  always "Business is tough, hard to make anything"

And I've never met a factory owner who didn't complain the factory was loosing money.  Even when the factory was at capacity.

My feeling is, now's not the time to get too conservative. You're product becomes a commodity,  Every one's knocking off 9 West's pointed toe pumps, Expect to see all the mass market retailers with the same silhouette next fall.  How about using some imagination and trying something different?

Sure the consumer is in "pullback and retrench"  right now, but human nature being what it is, I suspect by this fall the consumer will get tired of being tight fisted, and splurge a bit. 

The past is done, the present is here, now it's time to look to the future. Wether we look at it positively or with an attitude of gloom and doom, can influence what happens next. Sort of the self-fulfilling prophesy philosophy.

My rant for today, thank you very  much for listening.

Back From the Dark Side

Well just in case you were wondering where I was at for the last month and a half since the last post, lets just say I was at the Dark Side of Shoemaking.

Lets just way working for a Chinese owned shoe factory was (and I say WAS) interesting.  Being the only Laowai was even more interesting, racism is alive and well in China.  Not out in the open, but there nonetheless.

I'm not going to go into the gory details as to what happened, but I will give some observations on the footwear industry from the factory side as it has seemed to change quite a bit.

There seemed to be a decided lack of footwear knowledge  on the part of some of the factory customer's staff.  Knowledgeable decisions that were at one time made by the customer's staff are now left up to the factory, and as any old "China Hand" can tell you, that's usually not a good thing. 

Despite the lip service given to human rights, codes of conduct and such, in reality, the main thing Major Customer cares about is getting the shoes in the shortest time possible, and if it means working 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, so be it.  I've seen this now working with 2 companies, so I suspect this is not an isolated deal.

And some new things I've learned from the experience

Merchandise managers usually have no clue as to what making a shoe is all about, but think they are experts in the craft.  (Actually I knew this from past companies, but this was proved out yet again.)

You can't run 650 amps of electricity through a 600 amp main box and meter.  Trust me.

Stir fry pork and rice gets boring 2 meals a day, 7 days a week.

GPS navigation systems in China generally work better than you would think. Even the copy versions.

When the boss puts his car up for collateral for a working capital loan, update the resume.

Viet Nam wasn't the answer.

Jianxi probably isn't either.

China's now putting McDonalds at the rest/fuel stops on the expressways.  The fall of modern civilization can't be far behind.

Learned a lot of other things, some of them even related to shoemaking.   We'll see what comes of this newfound knowledge.