JANVI TOURS

A shoemaker in Guangzhou, who has manufactured custom-made shoes for more than 20 years, wins affection by his masterpieces. This shoe shop is located in Renmin North Road where people from all over the world, both foreigners and locals are patronizing his work. When new orders keep pouring in, the shopkeeper, shoemaker prefers to receive fewer orders for maintaining the quality of shoes rather than transfer orders to shoe contractors for outward processing.

Wu Chaoqiang and his wife make hundreds of custom shoes in a year, and they pay great attention to the quality of each shoe so their products are expensive. For example, a pair of general custom shoes cost ￥1000~2000, a pair of special custom shoes costs ￥3000~5000, some high boots for women even costs around ￥10000.

The shopkeeper Wu Chaoqiang was a teacher of primary school. For 20 years after he had resigned, Wu Chaoqiang worked in a shoe factory which was owned by his relative. When he mastered the process of manufacturing handmade shoes, he opened a shoe shop and started to specialize in the manufacture of high-quality custom shoes.

Making a pair of custom shoes will go through over 300 successive procedures, included taking measurements, creating a last, polishing the last, designing shoes, and tailoring, etc. Due to mass complicated procedures and lack of manpower, manufacturing a pair of custom shoes takes at least half a month.

“To make customers satisfied with the shoes, I found out a set of the unique process by studying a lot of books and a great deal of information for many years.”, Wu Chaoqiang said. His unique process is to create a last through plaster and bandage. First, cover the feet with a bandage and then the plaster. Wait until the plaster gets dry then scissor it and get the foot molding.

Nowadays, 3D printing is spreading fast with the improvement of technology but it is imperfect. Thus, that is why the shoemaker Wu Chaoqiang continues to use such a “stupid method” to create last because of accuracy.