Some of you will know, or at the very least have an inkling that the pair of shoes you see sat on a shelf in your local shoe shop has had a long and interesting journey. No, not just the one from the factory although I’ll include that, I mean the whole process from the designers first glimmer of an idea to a physical pair of shoes on the shelf in that shop, hopefully Wynsors, right there in front of you. But, for those of you who don’t here’s the story…
It’s no secret that high end fashion drives the industry. When you look at some of the outrageous concoctions that totter down the worlds catwalk that can sometimes be difficult to appreciate, like the Alexander McQueen ‘hoof style shoe’ however, details from what you see there very quickly end up on the high street not perhaps quite the same extreme shape but it’s fair to say that textures and materials from the range and taller shoes with more integral/covered platforms became more evident as a result of his designs. For many of our own brand shoes, our designers use similar sources they will see details in designs, toe shapes, heel styles or some element of decoration and draw out a design that captures the elements of these designs but in a more wearable form. Visits to fashion hot spots like London, Milan New York and Paris add to this pool of information, then the shoe’s physical journey begins.
Once the design is done on computer the colour, material and size range information are added and this is then e-mailed direct to the factory. There an appropriate footwear last or mould is selected and a sole unit as specified by the designer is added to the design, and from all this an initial design emerges. This hand made one off sample is then sent back to the designer for approval followed by a production sample, made in exactly the same way as the bulk production of the design for Quality Control to inspect and check against relevant tolerances and legislation. This final stage is the green light for production so long as the strict criteria set by Wynsors QC team are met the factories can start to produce the style.
Once in to production from start to finish the manufacturing process takes around 12 weeks 8 being made and 4 spent sailing over from the Far East on one of those huge ships container we have all seen either on TV or for real ploughing through the world’s oceans; stacked high with lorry sized containers filled with all manner of goods destined for the UK consumer. The lorries then arrive at our distribution centre the shoes checked again by our fully accredited QC team before they are finally delivered out to your store.
So next time you are shopping at Wynsors spare a thought for the global team of people who all play their part in the production of the shoes you buy, and the time effort and skill involved in the design, manufacture delivery of each pair.
