Hey can anyone give me an idea of the cost of getting a small run of shoes made, say 500 pairs in Asia. Are there factories that would work with an individual who doesn’t know too much about factory shoe production? (I’ve studied handmade shoes but not industrial design) I’ve got some ideas and have made some mock ups but realise I would probably need to use lasts and soles and maybe all materials already in stock to keep costs down but they’re just ideas so can be easily adapted. If I could get some rough ideas of costs and maybe some ideas about where I would have to go that would be great, thanks - Tim
Our company civilianlab.com has an OEM division and we have done smaller quantities of footwear in our asian factories for firms.
Usually, the experience of the designer/client is pretty irelevant. The only thing that matters is whether they can pay the bill and if the order is big enough.
The problem with doing 500 pairs of shoes is that the shoes must cost around $10 a pair in order to retail for an o.k. price in the West after the distribution chain. So 500 shoes only makes the factory $5000 minus their expenses for materials, labor, moulds overhead. So it is a tough sell.
The way to approach these type of ideas, always, is to make up your designs, make up a website, and then try to sell the idea to your distributors, retailers, and financial backers. If they want to buy the idea you can easily make more than 500 shoes and a firm like ours would make it for you, and sertainly start prototypes to lock in the deal.
It is my experience that companies always try to figure out how to make a low amount of product insterad of figuring out how to sell a lot of product. Trust me, if you can’t sell 500 of something, you can’t sell 3000 either.
Hope that helps.
Fil.