Mad About Shoes Friday, 25 June 2010 07:53 Written by Florencia Giner

As women, we all know the important role that shoes play in a lady’s life. Shanghai can definitely be a heaven for shoes shoppers IF you got little Cinderella feet.

I’m a 1.77 meter tall girl with US10 size shoes and soon after arriving to Shanghai I discovered that buying shoes was not going to be an easy task for me. My first encounter with the ‘shoes problem’ was in a little shoe store in Shaanxi Rd., where before even asking an employee looked at me and said: ‘No, we don’t have size 40’. The response got repeated over and over again in Parksons Mall: ‘No we don’t have that size’.

I cannot tell you how discouraged and inadequate I felt that day. Obviously there is always the solution of ordering shoes from the US, but this option didn’t attracted me that much not only because I will end up paying a lot in shipping, plus the waiting time plus the fact that you should try your shoes before buying them because they can ‘seriously hurt’.

I was committed to get my shoes and I decided to not give up, so after doing some research in different expat sites in the net, I discovered about the ‘custom made’ shoes option.

Coming from the US, a highly industrialized country, getting ‘custom made’ shoes has never been an option for a ‘working girl’ like me because of the extremely high price tag. In Shanghai the story is quite different and getting ‘custom made’ shoes although not an extremely cheap solution is definitely in the ‘affordable’ section.

What I learned in the sites that I looked is that you can take a pair of shoes that you already have and ask the shoe maker to make a copy or you can take a picture from internet and ask them to make it for you.

There are several custom made shoe makers in Shanghai at different price tags, basically what separates the waters is the leather quality, if you want Italian Leather (the best) you will need to pay more, same as premium leather types like Ostrich, Crocodile, etc.

One of the shoe makers that came highly recommended by satisfied customers was Benzhou Shoes in Nanyang Rd. (behind Plaza 66  Mall - they also have another store in HongQiao Rd), so a couple of months ago I decided to give them a try.

This little shop is covered with shelves proudly showcasing their ’custom made’ shoes for men and women. Once you get there the first thing they do is to make you stand in a sheet of paper to trace your feet and they take a bunch of dimensions using a centimeter like a tailor would do. After that the fun part starts, you show them the picture of the pair you want done. You start first selecting the leather color or colors (if you are playing designer) for your shoes, then you select the ‘interior’ finish, do you want red, cream, black inside your shoes?, they even have some furry fabric that you can put inside your shoes to help you withstand Shanghai winter. After the material selection you proceed to select heels and buckles (if your shoe has them), they will also ask you a bunch of questions regarding soles (rubber or leather) and if you want your heels wrapped with leather or not, they can also add a very thin ‘anti-slip’ rubber under your soles as an option.

One thing that I really enjoyed of this experience is that the people of Benzhou Shoes have been doing this for a long time so they are very good at giving you suggestions or tell you when a heel is not going to work with the style you want. They are also open to more complicated designs where you ask for certain model of shoes BUT you want the decoration of this other pair (yes that will be me playing designer again).

The entire process of getting your pair done, should take around 20 days, within the first 10 days they will send you a SMS to let you know that your shoes are ready for fitting. The first time I went for a fitting it was kind of funny, the lady takes out a bag with some brown shoes, and instantly I say: ‘No, those are not my shoes I order a couple of black ones’. Turns out that ‘those’ where my shoes, what happens that as a newbie I did not know that first they will make you a ‘dummy’ shoe for trying. The ‘dummy’ shoe, is made of brown synthetic leather with all the decoration details you ordered (the heals you selected included) for you to see and try. This is the time to get changes done and make sure that you like the style and the shoes fit properly. After this fitting and with all your comments they will proceed to get the ‘real’ shoes done, sometimes they may ask you to go for a second fitting with the ‘dummy’ if the changes you requested were big. I really like the way the do their business, they make sure that you leave their store as a happy customer with exactly the product you wanted.

I cannot tell you how exciting is going to pick up your shoes and see them for real for the first time.

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#2 RE: Mad About Shoes — FlorG 2010-06-25 17:22

Julz,
Prices for ladies shoes start @ 600 rmb (rubber soles) and 700 rmb (leather soles). I paid 700 rmb for the red shoes (style is pretty straight forward)and no additions. I paid 800 rmb for the 'golden' sandals, because the design has platform and the heels are wrapped in leather as well.
The most expensive pair were the 'pink' shoes, those were 900 rmb because they have platform, heels wrapped in leather and they have the double bow on top which was a difficult item to do (they copied them from the picture I gave them and they did a TERRIFIC JOB).
As a guideline: for each add you want in your shoes is 50 rmb (let's say I want them to have platform), which I think is a pretty inexpensive price.

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#1 RE: Mad About Shoes — julia 2010-06-25 09:56

Flo thanks for the step by step instructions... I am one of those people with Chinese size feet, but I still don't really buy shoes here - I am a bit of a shoe snob I think... Can you give us a rough guide of prices that different types of shoes you have ordered costs?

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