By Nicole Tongson, CEO & Owner of Eidia Lush
A work-packed, hands-on weekend with the shoes has brought me closer to them than ever. After getting some very valuable feedback from you, our customers over the past few weeks, I locked myself in our studio, cranked up the radio and forced myself to think, "How can we make these shoes perfect? What things can we do to make them even better?"
While having a heart-to-heart with my babies (yes, I refer to them as my babies now), I came to the conclusion that our team of craftsman are human and we are spending hour upon hour hand-perfecting every stitch, cut, and detail...coming as close to perfection as humanly possible. The fact that our shoes are not manufactured in a factory or assembly line is their biggest charm quality-wise. They are worked on by one of our experienced craftsman from beginning to end. This one person has your shoe vision in mind from the very minute they pick up your order slip to the time it's loaded up in the delivery truck getting shipped out. This person knows your name because he or she will see it on their order box every day they work on it. This person knows what your style is because they will put together your custom design piece-by-piece. There really is love and hard work put into every pair. For a person cannot do this trade without having love for it, and a person cannot succeed within our company without having immaculate attention to detail.
So what can you expect from our shoes? What are some of these 'perfect details' I'm referring to and what are some of the minor issues we're still working on making perfect? Please see some of the up-close-and-personal photos I took of one of the shoes that was recently shipped out.
You can see we've nailed everything in the looks department...these shoes are hot. The fabric is smooth on the outside, there are virtually no imperfections...
...until we get to the sole. You can see here that towards the bottom of the heel, the sole has a slight imperfection in the way it was glued back on. This sole will not, by any means, come off because of the industrial-strength glue we use...but we need to figure out a way to have it be applied perfectly, without any bumpity bumps.
For our insoles, we custom cut them and hand-brand them. We joke with the team that once they've been with us a year, they get branded with the same logo. We all kind of hate using the brander because the burning smell STINKS...but look how pretty it comes out!
Now here's where we have the most problems...the back end of the inside. No matter how spot-on our patterns are for the fabric used, we always usually get a few wrinkles on the inside. Some experiments are under way on how we can eliminate these pesky little wrinkles, but until we've figured it out 100% here is what the inside of your shoes may look like:
In a nutshell, you'll be getting a gorgeous head-turning shoe that is literally made with love. Almost every day one of us comes up with a way to better the process and/or end product. We love getting feedback, ideas, and suggestions...and we really do listen to what our customers have to say, so keep em' coming!
For being a reader/fan of ours, use code ELBLOGROCKS to get 15% off your very own pair of custom-designed Eidia Lush shoes. We're looking forward to making them already!
