I love an underdog story and all of these Chinese bespoke shoemakers for me represent just that. Due to the industry of cheap labor and products, China over the last 50 years has received such a bad wrap for making ‘cheap things’ to the point where people scoffed at anything Chinese made. Now, I can most certainly agree with being against child labor and underpaying your employees to the point where it is nearly slavery but disregarding products from an entire country for what only a part of it does, for me is on the border of sheer ignorance. And thanks to Instagram and social media we can finally start seeing the individuals/companies that are in China making good products, that to be quite frank, are on the calibre of a European made one. Yes, I just said that. Because skill does not lay in a country, but rather in an individual or the culture of a company and how it teaches it’s employees to behave.
I look at these shoes by Yim Shoemaker (@yim.shoemaker on Instagram) and see a product just as appealing as any European bespoke shoemaker. And it makes me happy that there are young people out there like this breaking the mold of disbelief that good products cannot come out of China. (yet we all wear sneakers that are made in China, what hypocrisy!)
Check them out on Instagram. And if you don’t have IG, download it for mass inspiration of what is really out there in this great wide world of ours!
I think your “underdog” story is at least as good, although I doubt you think of yourself as an underdog.
I’m pretty sure he also goes by the brand name “Wuming” (meaning “no name”), through Hobu Leatherport.