When should you legally create your company?
You need to be legally creating your shoe company at the time when you hire people to provide services and start spending money. Up until this point your shoe brand is just an idea on paper. While it may exist in your mind, or on a note pad, once you need to start spending money, it’s real!
Your shoe company needs a name
Your shoe company name does not need to be the same as the brand name you put on your shoes. It can be, but it’s not required. If you think you may have more brands in the future, then pick something different. People often confuse the “company” name with the “brand” name. They are not the same. Think of a huge company like Proctor & Gamble TM. This company owns hundreds of different brand names, like Tide™, Pampers™, Cascade™, Braun™, Dawn™ and dozens of others. You can call your company almost anything you want, except a name that has already been taken. Often, a company with several brands will change its name to be the name of its most popular product.
What type of company?
Your new shoe company will need to be a legal business and be registered with the government. In the USA there are several options. The sole proprietorship and the limited liability company (LLC) are the most common for start-ups.
Sole Proprietorship for footwear
The sole proprietorship is the easiest company to set up. YOU are a sole proprietorship. You don’t need to file any tax paperwork. Although you still need to get local permits and licenses to legally do business. The sole proprietorship is simple as it is just YOU. Your personal finances are the company’s finances. Should something bad happen to your footwear company, it’s actually happening to YOU.
Learn more about starting a footwear Sole Proprietorship and the following topics in the book, How to Start Your Own Shoe Company.
Limited Liability Company (LLC) advantages for your shoe business
Product liability insurance for Footwear Manufacturers
Local government permits for shoe companies
Doing Business As (DBA) – Fictitious Names for your footwear brand
Seller’s permits for shoe businesses
Creating and protecting footwear trademarks
Web domains for your shoe brand
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Italian High Quality Shoes
The typical shoe factory in China will have hundreds, even thousands of workers, but there is a new class of small factories now producing the highest quality custom and semi-custom shoes. On a recent visit to China, I toured the show room of the custom shoe maker Top Owen. Owen, the founder of the brand, learned his trade in mass production of athletic footwear, but then changed course.
With a desire to create european craftsmanship in China, Owen left his job at a huge shoe factory to build his own micro factory. Owen hired on a staff of 25 expert shoe makers to operate his new custom shoe factory. After careful study of the highest quality European hand crafted shoes, Owen and his team now offer custom hand crafted footwear for shoe connoisseurs lucky enough to find him.
Are you looking for some custom made kicks? Owen has a section of mock vulc stitch down soles, classic trainer wedge, and classic basketball sole units available. For around $400 USD you can get your own pattern custom made in full grain leather. For an extra $125 USD you can have a test pattern sent to you for fitting.
Send Owen a design for dress shoes and his team will create exactly what you want. You pick the design, last shape, leathers and any extra styling work you desire. Prices start around $400 USD – depending on your material and design requirements. For an extra $125 USD you can have a test pattern sent to you for fitting.
Are you looking for a full custom fit? For a 100% hand made last fit just for you? The full custom program brings the high end European custom made service to you at a fraction of the European price. Send Owen and his team photographs of your foot and record the critical measurements. Then, send Owen your design for the dress shoes and his team will create them to your specifications. Once again, you pick the design, last shape, leathers and any extra styling work you desire.
How Designer Handbags are Made
All running shoes are made by the cold cement construction process. If you want to learn how to design shoes you need to know this basic shoe making process. Cold cement is the modern updated style of shoe construction. Due to the low temperatures required for bonding the upper to the shoe sole, it allows the use of modern lightweight plastic, foam and mesh materials. Every modern high performance running shoe is made by this cold cement process.
What are the best materials for running shoes? Most running shoes are constructed with breathable knit Polyester or Nylon mesh. Knit fabric allow the material to smoothly follow the last curves. Running shoe uppers often with PU leather reinforcements. Pu or synthetic leathers are great for running shoes as they have some stretch and are damaged by water. The classic running shoe is made from suede with some mesh inserts. While suede is comfortable and conforming, it’s not weather resistant and it’s very heavy when wet.
The pattern parts for the shoe are made into steel cutting dies. A cutting die is required for every part and every size. Each shoe part is cut from rolls of fabric or from leather hides. Fabric parts may be layered so many can be cut at the same time. Leather parts must be cut one by one to avoid having scars or other imperfections in the leather show on the final product.
For the custom shoe making process you can hand cut every piece with scissors or a sharp blade. Most shoe factories don’t actually buy cutting blades, they sharpen a small piece of steel in a few different shapes to suit what they are cutting. In the video you can see a paper pattern template is used to trace the design onto the shoe materials. The materials are then cut by hand. This process is used on all the leather and mesh parts.
Once the parts are cut you can see the edges are being skived. In the video this is done by hand. This is a time consuming process and it’s very easy to damage the cut shoe parts. A shoe factory sample room will have a small electric skiver like this one, they don’t cost very much and will save time in our mini shoe factory.
In the Wired™ article you can see some of these the machines lined up. The flat bed machine is the standard most recognizable type of machine. The machine is built into a table and run by an electric motor and has a foot control to advance the stitches automatically or one stitch at a time. This is the most common machine for assembling the flat pattern parts of the shoe.
per of the shoe has been stitched together, it needs to be “closed”. This closing operation creates an upper that cannot fit under the standard flat bed machine. The second most common sewing machine you will see in a shoe factory is the “Post” style. Bulky items can fit under the machine for easy assembly. This type of post sewing machine will be used to attach the tongue to the shoe or to secure the lining inside the shoe once it has been assembled into the final 3D shape.
With the upper almost complete we will need a special sewing machine to finish it. This machine is used to sew the bottom fabric onto the upper. This closes the upper. Now the upper is ready for lasting and assembly.
machine is very powerful and can easily drive the needle and thread through the leather and rubber.