China Bit #2: Factory Sample Room

Not too many people get to visit the factories in China, so with these photos I hope to share my experience. Just to break the process down a bit: before the shoes are sold in the stores, they go through a farely long process of development. One of the stops on the way is the sample room - here, the small run of the sale samples is produced. Think of it as a mini factory, but the workers are slightly more skilled as they have to be more flexible with large number of different styles being produced. This is a quick glance at a factory I work with, which produces about 400,000 units a year for our brand:

cutting...

the essential tool...

assembling...

stitching...

lasting crew...

finishing station...

finishing chemicals and dyes...

more dyes...

burnishing...

Random Finds: Paintings at Bongiorno

Had dinner at Bonjourno here in Dongguan tonight and liked the paintings...

China Bit #1: Fakes

I am all for the fancy originals!!!!!.....when you are at the point in your life when you can afford them. I am not there yet. So, for now a part of every China trip is going to the Dongguan Wal-Mart to get fakes. Wal-Mart is not the Wal-Mart as we know it: it is more of a mall type of set up with small stores. Usually I get watches - I am not a sucker for a bag and my wife likes to pick her own - , but this time I am lucky enough to be traveling with our Italian footwear veteran, who is a character -  just image an Italian stereotype man gesticulating and being loud. Besides chain-smoking, rocking a Moncler jacket, speaking Italinglish, calling everyone "my friend", and being extremely entertaining, he knows where to go for good fakes.

So, the way it works is that there is a front store, which sells cheap, bad-quality fakes. You have to ask them to take you upstairs. They walk you into another store with blacked out windows. Now the selection gets better! Pick whatever label you like. From here on you gotta bargain, and everyone has different strategies. I ended up picking up a couple of things, which I think I still overpaid for, but the quality was very good.

That was the side of the consumer. What about the companies that are "losing" millions of dollars by having their designs knocked off or overproduced and sold for less? Are they being violated? I think that the fake business produces a great deal of advertisement for the brands all over the world and the best part is that it is free!!! A bunch of brands are already "knocking off" their own product and creating a low price point sub-brands which carry the same products but dumbed down for the mass audiences and make buying fakes for the sake of brand name logos plain stupid!!! 

As a designer, in this case, I think after the initial design is out, it is almost a compliment that it is being copied!!! It doesn't matter that Fila knocked off the Prada sneaker...everyone still refers to it as the "Prada" shoe...and it is still being sold....and most people still want the original!!!

I hope that you understand that I do not condone the fake business; I simply look at it realistically.

Sunday Sketching

Since I spent the sunday in between time zones I didn't have time to put the sketch up...better late then never. This is the continuation of the theme from last week - boots. This desert boot has stretch knit around the collar line, canvas shaft, rest is leather.

Hajime Sorayama at Gering & Lopez Gallery

On thursday after work I decided to go check out the exhibition I had just read about on Highsnobiety. Wow!!! Hajime had some serious skills considering all this is done by hand! No wonder his illustrations have appeared in Playboy and Penthouse magazines - what else does a man want? Hajime touches various aspects of society through the erotic prism, sexualizing the technology obsession of the 1980's or impeccable compositions of contradicting yet similar desires in women and destruction.

Hajime also has made his mark in other design disciplines, collaborating with Disney on FUTURE MICKEY and KAWS, as well as working with Sony on AIBO robotic pet amongst all others. I think it is time to explore his work in detail and take away the valuable tricks of making shapes pop!!!