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The beginning of a new ending
The basic podiatrist practice today is to advise and recommend patients accordingly to their foot issues and shoes suitable for their condition.
However, old technology made orthotics very bulky, very thick. So, it can’t really fit into a woman’s formal shoes. It wasn’t too much of a problem to fit into men’s formal shoes but women shoes, in particular, was a challenge. Either the orthotic was too thick, there was no space the insole was not removable. Overall, women shoes are just not orthotic friendly. And so it made created this market way or this issue where people would sit with orthotics, but never use them and so struggle with getting better.
So many of us in our private practices would have leaflets from shoe companies comes, and a couple of other brands in Singapore or in Malaysia, and every time we gave someone an orthotic.
We would give them this pamphlet. And some of these pamphlets will try to make the shoe look like it is nice looking, and others will just show it for what it is. But overall, any woman from the age of 20 until the age of 50 to 60 was never impressed with the shoe options.
Events that motivated us
I remember many cases of lady patients that would look and say I’m not going to buy those shoes, or would rather wear sports shoes to work, than wear those shoes.
There was one case, in particular, many years ago that I remember very clearly was a bit of a turning point for me as far as it went to shoes. There was a lady patient from Europe, who I know for a fact was a grandmother of three. She had grey hair. She was very neat and very well dressed, but she came to see me for foot pain. On the day that her orthotic customized orthotic was ready for her. I revealed what her condition was and explained to her about shoes.
I then pulled out a pamphlet, one of the pamphlets that refer to local shoe brands distributors and all these various brands that make orthotic friendly shoes.
The lady started crying and then she said to me I can’t wear those shoes, and I said oh, what’s wrong. What are you talking about, and then she said, I can’t wear shoes like that, that will make me look ugly
Bootstrap and committed
So, that was the turning point for me, because for many years I have constantly been approached by patients to ask me, why don’t you knowing so much about shoe team up with a shoe company or make a pair of shoes on your own.
I decided that I would take it as a challenge, and as a project to develop a company that would make shoes that are suitable for orthotics that good shoes, but at the same time look reasonably attractive, and eventually become shoes that are attractive enough for people to buy them without saying that they look like how the shoes.
So I started working on the project, there was a lot of R&D. That went on for most about two years, which led to the development of the brand. There was a very long process of going to live in China for two months, projects, buy into that multiple visits to China, going through different projects. And what made, making the shoe so difficult, was the following. The average shoemaker or the average person who was going to go into shoes, does not make a shoe from scratch.
What happened next…
So when we visited China and visited Italy and went through all the different brands. Sadly, we might offend some other brands but here are our observations. What they do is they go to a factory that already has pre-existing designs, pre-existing outsoles pre-existing insoles pre-existing upper designs, and they mix and match them to make up their brand, some businessmen are so lazy that they basically go to a factory and just take their designs, and then sell it under their brand name.
It is very common for you to find a brand in New York that says, this is the latest Michelangelo shoes. Saying that it’s made in Italy they will push how they are so strict about what leathers they use etc, but if you go and research them very carefully like I did when visiting China, then you will find that the designer who, or the business person who owns the business, not once actually designed the shoe. They simply just went to China and put his label on any shoe that he liked. It’s not that China is unable to produce quality but due to their lack of thoughtful considerations.
Getting regular models claiming it made from Italy. This is, of course, something that we did not want to do as Solescape, because we knew that we had a unique problem to solve, we needed to make shoes that are healthy for women, that at the same time still looked attractive.
There were some problems we found in the brands, whether there were health shoe brands for fashion rounds. The most common problem was the width. Almost all shoes were not the suitable width for the South East Asian foot or the feet we find in Asia, which are feet that are oftentimes barefooted at home, or feet that are not inside shoes all the time. This type of foot is very wide in the front but very narrow at the back. It doesn’t matter about the race of the person, whether these Indian, Chinese or Caucasian, living in Southeast Asia, as long as they’ve been in Southeast Asia for a certain amount of time the foot is generally going to be wider than the average shoe being sold on the market, and sometimes even longer too. So what we needed to create was a shoe that changed widths in the front, but remained the same width at the back.
Red – Shoes covering
Yellow – Shoe Base
1st foot – normal shoes but not wide enough
2nd foot – Shoes that industry claims that it’s wider
3rd foot – how shoes should be fitted medically exactly for your foot so it will not cause painful conditions.
The key difference that we discovered when visiting all the factories, every shoe brand that makes the shoe, the way they say it is wider, is only making the upper material, longer and wider so that they make the shoe deeper. So when you put your foot into the shoe. It feels roomier. This is the same as walking into an apartment. For instance, that is really small, in Singapore. When offering you 800 square feet, they want it to feel as though it’s 1400, square feet, so all they do is they leave the windows and the doors open when you visit, and they make sure they made the ceiling, extra high. So with the highest ceiling, you’ll walk in feeling that, oh this is spacious and roomy, but actually it is only 800 square feet.
Similarly, the shoes when you put the foot in because the extra material around the tub making the shoe deeper and making the material overlap the bottom part of the shoe. It suddenly feels roomy, however, that is not a wider shoe that true wider shoe would mean that the outer soul will be wider, and the material on top will still be the same. It doesn’t become deepen necessarily.
Instead of going for profit which the industry does, we decided to go the more expensive route to fix the core issue – working closely with shoes last experts with our medical understanding. Crafting shoes that looks beautiful and deals with wide front width issues due to feet swelling or due to genetic issues like bunions and other conditions.
Creating three different sizes that go from 8.5mm to 9.5mm which no one else has in the market. Also known and trademarked as – The Min, The More & The Most
There are also other issues that the industry fashionable standards did not bother to spend the extra bucks to achieve medical standards for healthy footwear which we had like – Heel Cups Support, Shoe Shanks Stabilisation and Removable Insoles Customisation. Find out more about the medical technology we’ve created or book an appointment with us to receive the best treatment | prevention available while looking beautiful at the same time.
Footwear TechnologySolescape Experience
It’s a pretty long story and journey, but that’s also how much effort we put into it – Mark B. Reyneker, Podiatrist
These shoes are not only pretty but I strongly recommend them to any woman with or without foot issues due to it’s capabilities in prevention and correction – Kardem Kiter, Podiatrist
The Solescape Experience Fitting Studio
Foot Health Screening + Podiatrist Evaluation Report + Dedicated Shoe Fitting Assistant + A Pair of Shoes