• Home
  • /
  • Fixing manufacture mistake with your shoe designs

Fixing manufacturer mistake with your shoe designs

Dear Sveta,

I’m studying hard ur courses and I have some questions.I’ve received the sandals and sneakers which made by manufacturers of mine from Guatemala and Thailand. I have some problems with these products:

The sandals from Thailand, they used the kind of studs that like punched so it left sharp edges, to provide customers hurting by them I need to do some improvements. What’s ur suggestion? See attached IMG 2469 pic of the studs.

The Guatemala sneakers:

They used a slippery plastic sole, see attached IMG 2470, which I hate very much, how can I change the soles to rubber sole? What’s efficient? I’m talking about 78 pairs of them…

One design does not hold the ankle, can I put an eyelet more at the top to solve this problem? See attached picture IMG 2086 of this model.

One design has jute edge surround the foot, see IMG 2172 attached, Which is hard, do you know a method to make it softer there?

The Guatemala sandals (pic IMG 2472) :

They are leather sandal with embroidered textile which is thick,  the result is unwearable inner sole at this moment because there are bombs where it connects the textile(including leather lining),  how can I flat the inner sole to make them wearable? With cork/foam?

They burned by hand the letters of my logo on the inner sole, which do not look like my brand at all… what should I do? Cover them with well-made textile logo with glue?

I am very sad about the delivered goods but I have to solve these problems all by myself. Please help me! Any idea of you I’ll appreciate a lot.

Thank you in advance!

Met vriendelijke groet, Kind regards,

Nana Vermeulen

The Netherlands

Hi Nana,

This is not an ordinary tutorial as we make when we create our shoes, in this solution I will show how we will be fixing shoe designs that were done in a bad way by manufacturer.
 
1. In the sandals with sharp studs, you can sand the edge of those studs with the needle file and then with the sanding paper to create the smooth edge of those studs.
 
2.The Guatemala sneakers:
 
You are lucky  that those sneakers are with platforms, because these platforms form a solid support and it  will be possible to replace new soles.  Usually to make this kind of work you have to place shoes on the lasts.
Take off the soles and attach the rubber soles, which you want. But in my opinion, it will be very hard to take off old soles without damage for the covered platforms.
 
 3. To place the eyelet on the top can help to hold the shoes on the feet. Don’t do it right away on the fabric, because it will tear up with the time.
Attach the pieces of leather in the shape of the existing  leather elements that holds the laces , place the eyelets on them or just make  holes. This will be a little bit different than what you wanted but that is what you need to do fixing shoe designs.

4.  Shoes with jute edge:

 Try to crumple the edges a little bit or hit with the hammer. Maybe it will soft the edges

5. The Guatemala sandals:

Here you have two options:
1. You need to peel off  the side straps of the upper from the insoles, but before that,mark the places on the insoles where they were originally. Sand those places to create a kind of channels to enter inside them the sandal straps in order to avoid creation of bumps . See today’s a new lesson in unisex sandal course.
In this lesson I show how to make those channels on the bottom of leather midsoles.
After you will attach the sandal straps on the insoles, skive the edges to make them thinner.  

 

2.  If the leather insoles of your sandals not too thick, and you can’t make the channels on the  bottom surface. You need to re-last the sandal straps,making them wider. If on the surface of the upper there are stains of glue or sanded surface, cover them with piece of leather.  
After you will attach upper straps skive the edges to make them thinner. 
See it in the picture. ( the yellow color it’s just to make it more visible)
 
6. Your logo
 
You can try to attach the fabric logo, but make a few (maybe by hand) stitches to hold well the new logo. Just with a glue the fabric logo will come off.