part 1 When we arrived a man gave us a tour around, first we went upstairs where a worker (who's job was to sketch shoes) gave a talk about his job and the first stages of making a shoe. He showed us a couple of books names 'Insight' they were image&material books containing many materials, notes, every page sort of had a certain theme or colour like a mood board of ideas.
He explained that they made sketches in a book, and the final one would be drawn up properly labelled, colored & the choice of materials as well. Next it would be given to the boss to see if he wanted any changes, if he liked it and whether they would continue in the making. If so, then he would draw the design up on a vax' which is basically a plastic template to go over the block template, which is like use of a mannequin.
Also a template sheet would be sent to China to check if all is correct, theme boards&colour boards will also be sent for a taste of the colors... But the colour boards apparently have to be separate for each colour.
(he also added when the shoe is created a model would come in and try it)
we asked how long the process of creating a shoe takes, and he said not long at all it just depends on when they get the information back from china & other places.
- 1000 pairs a week are sold in Van Dal.
- To make a shoe it only costs them £6/7.
- Van Dal shoes are sold for roughly £70-80 in the shop.
Materials
- Suede
- Metallic material
- snake design
- Lamb skin
- New buck
- Patent
- leather which in a process turns like lizard skin affect.
- Leopard skin.
Part 2
Next a man showed us a room with a computer and a scanner thing, under the scanner was a shoe plastic template with lines, he then scanned it to the computer and the template came on the screen with a view of all the lines. He then sent it to the 'Cutting table' machine where a type of big white square paper was placed on top, part of the machine moved down over the paper and printed the templates onto the paper, the little part of the machine contained a pen&a knife so it easily cut out templates of the shoe and also printed a size on them. It stopped when the whole paper was filled with templates, The man got them all off and gave us one each to keep.
After hew sent the remaining to the 'Clicker' so he could use them to cut out pieces of material in the correct shapes/parts.
Women all used the sewing machines around him, and stitched all his bits of material together.
Next they were sent to different parts of the factory for work to be done on to the parts, a worker used glue to stick the sole on. Women burnt the fibres off the shoe, wiping & Cleaning & using a 'bottom ruffer' to finally make the shoes ready for presentation.
-90% of shoes came from India & China.
- Really high quality came from Italy.
- Pantone book' is the name for the colour book.
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-I liked the experience of visiting the Florida shoe factory because i found every part interesting and i didn't realise how much there really was to making a shoe. I enjoyed most of the stages just learning about what you do to make a shoe.
-When you make a shoe there is a lot of designing work to do before you continue to the making, you have to...
- plan
- choose materials
- draw sketches & designs
- Pick a main one.
- Send template drawings to China.
- make a plastic template
-The visit has helped me alot with the making of our group shoe because we now know all the stages to make one compared to how much time we actually have till completion, so most of my groups ideas will have to be put aside because they will be too extreme to make, as only a simple shoe will take a bit of difficulty... It has also given us some ideas of how we can make ours & what materials.
overall a good visit :D
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