Are expanding shoes a new growth market?
EXPANDABLE shoes could be just the fit for parents struggling to keep up with the cost of their children’s growing feet.
John Lewis is working with British shoe firm Pip & Henry on a ‘jigsaw-like’ design that allows them to grow by up to three half-sizes – potentially doubling or tripling the average life of shoes.
Jeroo Doodhmal, the eco-brand’s founder, said she came up with the idea after being shocked at how often she had to get new shoes for her five-year-old daughter Vivaana.
The 38-year-old said: ‘I was amazed at how she was outgrowing clothes and shoes. I did some research and discovered younger kids outgrow shoes every three to four months, with a typical child owning up to 15 pairs a year. The costs for parents can add up into the hundreds, and that is on top of the cost to the environment. Clothes can fairly easily be recycled, but shoes can’t.’
John Lewis has handed Ms Doodhmal a £250,000 grant to design the footwear and also develop manufacturing methods to make shoes easier to recycle.
Options for the design include a modular sole that can have expansions added to it, along with an elasticated or foldable upper that can be stretched out.
Allowing the footwear to grow by three half-sizes – that’s 1.5cm – could potentially save cash-strapped parents hundreds of pounds each year.
The first models will be aimed at undersevens and could be in shops as early as this time next year, with a price tag of around £60.
The grant will also be used to try to avoid the mountain of waste that shoes produce. According to the Better Shoes Foundation around 142,750 tons of shoes – about 85 per cent – end up in landfill every year. Made predominantly of plastics, synthetics and other heavily processed materials, these shoes decompose at a very slow rate and leach harmful chemicals and toxins into the ground and water for thousands of years.