Fashioning shoes one step at a time
IF you want to know the person you’re talking to, take a look at the shoes they’re wearing. They can tell a great deal about the elegance of the woman who chose them. They are not only protectors of the feet; they also silently reflect the inner thoughts, emotions, intellect, and cultural maturity of the wearer.
They can also bear witness to a community, a group of people who wear them, value them, and bring them to the next level of wearable art.
Such attitudes drive a young woman from Hue who has taken her shoes to the wider world.
Local significance, global thinking
After graduating from college in 2008, Nguyen Ngoc Quynh Anh
(pic), then 23, ventured abroad to Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic to start a new life selling goodies in a 500sq m store.
Two years later, she moved to Strakonice and decided to get a business of her own off the ground.
She noticed that guarantees on goods from the EU were usually for two years, whereas the goods she imported from China to sell were covered for much less time.
She put all of her capital into opening a new store and stocking its shelves. Sales were slow, though, and outlays continued to exceed revenue. Problems mounted.
Quynh Anh resolved all of the problems one at a time and managed to remain in the foreign country. Life was tough, but not insurmountable.
“Take local action with overall global thinking” was the mantra she adopted, and she decided to return to Hue in 2014 to find her market niche.
“At first I only thought about making a product that could be sold abroad, that bore Vietnamese culture and expertise,” she said.
“But I had a hard time determining what that product might be.”
Her hometown of Hue was the royal capital of the Nguyen dynasty for 143 years, from 1802 to 1945. It was a magnet drawing in many craft guilds to serve the court and its demanding contingent: martial arts mandarins, men of letters, doctors, teachers, and artisans.
Traditional crafts need connoisseur clients to thrive and keep the work flowing.
More than 80 traditional guilds are now operating in and around Hue, half of which are known nationwide.