When is it worth paying more?

Life Hacking
102

Hi there,
it seems nobody has mentioned Shoepassion yet.

They only have shops in Germany but also an online shop = buy in CHF, no hassle with customs.

I’ve bought my first pair - a classis black derby for to go with a business suit - almost to the day 5 years ago. Since then, I’ve added a handful of pairs in both brown and black with different degree of “casualness” (e. g. broguing, wingtips, decorative stitching).
I use (almost: abuse) my shoes a lot, i. e. I wear them for 8-12 hours and walk a lot (business travels). So far, I’m impressed: Terrific fit, and if you take care of them, they age gracefully. Most have leather soles so I have them fitted with rubber soles . Yes, a shame for shoe aficionados, but grip and thus safety before tradition. So all these shoes need is maybe another pair of rubber soles once a year and a heel replaced, but that’s the usual wear and tear. Your local shoemaker is your friend (he actually knows the brand and likes them because you can actually fix them.)

Shoepassion has several sub-brands but I’ve stuck to the more classic ones which costs 200-300 CHF/pair (although there are Sales quite often, like just now). Based on one exception (~150 CHF/pair), I would stick to the more expensive line.

Also, service in the stores and online is great. So if you have the chance to try them one once, you can safely order online and have one thing less in your wardrobe to worry about.

Cheers,
J.

103

Interestingly, my experience with Shoepassion was negative. The shoes were bad quality, their online support was rather unresponsive.

104

Hi Neville,
interesting indeed - would you mind sharing the series you bought (Dinkelacker, house brand, Henry Stevens…) and the issues, e. g. bad fit, fraying leather, bad stitching?
Admittedly, I had only one issue to deal with on the phone. But the staff in at least three stores was really helpful. They also brought up the topic of deducting the VAT for a Swiss resident on their own (wouldn’t have thought of that).

Cheers,
J.

105

It was their house brand, a pair of spectator shoes. The stitchings were not well executed, not where they should have been, and fraying. The paint job was bad also, very sloppy. So I reached out to them, trying to find a solution, but they were not very responsive. I returned the shoes.

I have several old Dinkelacker: Absolutely indestructible. I hope they maintained that level of quality now that they belong to Shoepassion.

106

Shoepassion or not, you’d hope they maintained the level of quality after ending a more than 60-year tradition of shoemaking in Budapest, Hungary by moving production to Spain in 2020.

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107

Oh, I didn’t know that!

EDIT: And I am not happy! :rage:

108

Well, the logic and reason they’re providing seems at least plausible. And wouldn’t you’ve heard very similar criticism decades ago, when they moved from Germany to Hungary? In hindsight, you could say that that was a successful move.

I really don’t know about their “new” quality, since I’m not into such expensive shoes.

That said… everybody can google, can’t we?

[Eine gemeinsame Produktionsstätte] "ist im Moment nicht geplant. Heinrich Dinkelacker bleibt in Budapest, Shoepassion kommt weiterhin aus Spanien (…)

Im vergangenen Jahr wurde viel investiert in den Standort Budapest; weitere Maßnahmen sind hier ebenso in Vorbereitung"

Kind funny, when they claimed having prepared and moved production to Spain over a period of “two years”, to complete the transition by 2020.

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