Shoemaking and lasts

It's almost close to 2 years now that I have embarked on this new venture (1 year planning, designing and sourcing for factory) and 1 year in actual business of marketing and selling. There have been many difficulties along the way as I started off without a single technical shoe making knowledge and so it was an eye opener and big learning curve everyday. I have been fortunate to have a production team who allow me to ask as much as I like, to learn and observe every detail. Sometimes being scolded because of my unrealistic designs is also one of the ways I understand the intricacies of shoemaking.

By the way, this experience is incredible but I can't say I am a shoemaker. I design at best, I can't make a shoe from scratch. I would love to. This is why one day I called up this school (perhaps the only school in Malaysia) who offers shoe making course. But after speaking to the lecturer, only did I realise that they do not offer shoe making, but shoe designing - how to draw.

Of course there is a course available for people who really want to be shoe makers where it is government funded (as artisans are a dying breed here and people call you factory worker) and the eventual outcome is that you secure a job in factories making shoes. This does not bode well with me either, as the contract is government pay for you to learn and you attach yourself to a factory/shoe company for at least a number of years.

Of course, there is always the option of going overseas to learn from a master but $$$ is always an issue. Hence, learning from my factory at present is the most cost saving option, but no way will I be able to craft a shoe out of my own hands. It is such a technical skill that I am confident when I say, making shoes is more difficult than making a bag or a dress. Besides needing a bigger team, you need to worry about lasts.This is a wooden last but my factory uses plastic ones. The last is the shape of the foot, it determines how pointy or rounded or squarish the toe area will be, the depth of your foot arch, the shape of the back, etc. Basically, how the shoe will be shaped because this is what shoemakers use to make shoes by hand. The bottom sole will be applied to the last and the upper will be placed on top of it (after being sewn) and pulled down to be tacked to the bottom of the sole in order to create the shape of the shoe. This involves and lot of hammering, cutting, skiving, attaching of the heel, etc before the last is removed and voila, the shoe stands by itself before it eventually goes into an 'oven' to be baked.

For a 4" heel shoe, you will need to have a 4" heel last. If you make a 4 " heel last with a pointy toe box, it means when you use that last, all your shoes will come out as a 4" with a pointy toe box. If you want a rounded toe box, you need another last. If you have a 4" heel last that is used to make closed toe shoes, then you need to invest in another last for open toe shoes because you cannot use the latter to make open toe shoes. And same goes for different heel heights.

If you want to make boots, you need a high last, or what I would call as last with legs so that your material can be wrapped around the legs mid calf or till the knee, depending on what type of boot you want to make.

So can you imagine, how many lasts one company must invest in offering a wide variety of shoes styles - closed toe pump, open toe pump, closed toe boot, open toe boot, closed toe flats, open toe flats, closed toe wedges, open toe wedges - in various heel heights?

For a bigger company who sells thousands of shoes at one go, they need to produce in thousands, which means they need to make hundreds of each last on hand so that the production workers can make hundred pairs of that style per day.

This is why small designers like me cannot have too many variety of shoe heights and shapes as the investment in lasts is expensive. Furthermore, we haven't gotten into the issue of heel and platform shapes. If you want to design you own arty farty signature heel and platform, you need to invest in the moulds for those as well, by the sizes. If you make size 35 - 41, that is 7 different sizes - you need to pay for 7 heel moulds, same with platforms. It is that mind boggling.

Everything is about quantity, if you sell cheap shoes, you are able to make in high volume, hence all the costs of the lasts and heel/platform moulds, buckles will become cheaper as it is apportioned across a big quantity. For start up designers, we do not have the liberty of offering too many variety at one go, noticed how the same shoe shapes get repeated over many seasons but with different uppers/styles. We do this because we need to justify and even out the investment behind these moulds.

Of course there are methods that can lower costs like buying ready made lasts, platform and heels from respective manufacturers or if you factory is kind enough to allow you to use their available lasts, like what I am currently doing. But it won't be as interesting as creating your own (which can be copied, another headache i won't go into). And this is why designers who create their own shoe heels or platform with their own lasts need to charge so high. For me, it's always a challenge to keep my costs down because my shoes are intended to be priced at mid range tier. But ultimately, I would love to be able to create my own special signature in either the heel or the platform or the last and still be able to price it at mid range pricing. That is the goal. The more people support GlamRockChic, the nearer I am to that goal. Thank you.

By the way, if a person claims to design their own shoes and is able to afford so many different shapes and variety at a time and sell their shoes at a cheap price, then they are not designing it - they are just simply buying from suppliers who produce in big scale and putting their own logo on the shoes, just like what I am doing with Glammies. This is why sometimes you buy a shoe from brand XXX, think it's an original but then see the exact same design from brand YYY. Nothing wrong with that, it's business but what irks me if the person claims she/he designs it when clearly it's not. What further irks me if the person says she/he makes the shoes themselves. Don't be fooled, if you are always making shoes with your hands, you can never have nice hands. Let alone a good manicured hand with long beautiful fingernails. It is 'designers'/shoemakers' like these who really give the genuine ones a bad rep.