The shoe materials you select for your shoe design are what bring your shoe factory ideas to life! You will find that the pattern of the shoe is not the critical or special feature, the materials of the shoe are! Learning to specify shoe materials is essential when learning to make shoes! You have an endless menu of industrial material and color options to create your footwear masterpiece. Rich leathers, silky mesh, or high-tech synthetics, take your pick.
The shoe designer must take great care in choosing the right materials that can cope with the demands of the shoe factory. The performance and manufacturing demands of the footwear must be met. Can’t wear a beautiful material that is torn during long-lasting operation or fade in sunlight! So, let’s learn how to select shoe materials.
Factors for shoes factory materials:
When selecting shoe materials for your projects, the shoe design brief should help guide your choices. The design brief defines the type of shoe you are making: a ballet shoe for a ballerina or work boots for lumberjacks? What is the best material for sneakers? What are the best materials for running shoes? Will they be cheap or premium shoes? With your design brief in hand and some background knowledge, you can select the right materials for your shoe design.
The most common materials for the shoe factory are leathers, textiles, synthetics, rubber, foam, and plastic. Each one has its specific uses in footwear. Depending on your design, each material will have a place in your shoe. The selection of materials is one of the fundamentals of shoe design.
Leather for shoe factory
Cowhide is the most widely used material for making shoes. It is durable, flexible, stretchable, and available in many styles, colors, and prices. It is really a great material to wear, and you can make beautiful functional and fashionable shoes with leather.
A fine leather shoe breathes and fits like no other shoe. A handmade leather shoe can be a masterpiece of the shoemaker’s trade. But leather has some drawbacks. It can be heavy, hot, and susceptible to water absorption and damage if left untreated. Waterproof and waterproof treatments add cost.
Leather is a relatively expensive material compared to fabric or other man-made materials and must be treated with care during shoemaking, which is why it should be left in the hands of experts. Because leather hides are from individual animals, each one is a different size and each will have scars, blemishes, and even marks that should be avoided when cutting.
This uncut material is called shear loss. For leather, the cut loss is at best 5% of a skin, for the highest quality shoes, the cut loss of shoe leather can be 15%. That’s 15% of the cost of the material that is thrown away.
Depending on the import rules in your country, leather tends to have a lower duty rate. Shoes made with 51% leather surface have an import tax of around 9%. A textile shoe can cost 20% of the FOB price + .90, that’s a high service fee! (depending on the country of origin).
Textiles for footwear
Shoe textiles come in a wide variety of colors, fabrics, knits, fibers, and deniers. Denier is how the weight of the yarn is measured. 1 denier = 1 gram per 9000 meters of yarn. Typical denier is 110D for very light fabrics, 420D and 600D are common in shoe fabrics. Footwear textiles come in many types of fibers, such as cotton, wool, nylon, polyester, polypropylene, rayon, lycra, and many others. Each has its own appearance and physical properties.
Textiles are a miraculous material for shoes! With an infinite variety of fabrics, colors, patterns and special features, textiles have a special place in shoe design. You will find textiles inside and out on footwear and even on the bottom. Synthetic polymer fibers, such as nylon and polyester, are lightweight and durable. Lycra is stretchable and cotton canvas is a must for vulcanized construction and has a look of its own.
Textiles for footwear
Shoe textiles come in a wide variety of colors, fabrics, knits, fibers, and deniers. Denier is how the weight of the yarn is measured. 1 denier = 1 gram per 9000 meters of yarn. Typical denier is 110D for very light fabrics, 420D and 600D are common in shoe fabrics. Footwear textiles come in many types of fibers, such as cotton, wool, nylon, polyester, polypropylene, rayon, lycra, and many others. Each has its own appearance and physical properties.
Textiles are a miraculous material for shoes! With an infinite variety of fabrics, colors, patterns and special features, textiles have a special place in shoe design. You will find textiles inside and out on footwear and even on the bottom. Synthetic polymer fibers, such as nylon and polyester, are lightweight and durable. Lycra is stretchable and cotton canvas is a must for vulcanized construction and has a look of its own.
These man-made materials are often a two-layer composite, which is a backing layer made of woven or non-woven polyester fibers, combined with an outer surface by a ‘dry’ lamination process or by ‘wet’ liquid processes. Many of the less expensive synthetics have a fibrous woven backing with PVC skin manufactured by a wet process. The surface of these may not be 100% smooth and the shoe will show wrinkles and creases. This material is the cheap material found in cheap shoes.
What is the best material for making shoes?
There is no best material for shoes. The best material for a running shoe is not the best material for a work boot. The shoe designer, shoe developer, and product manager must work together to choose materials based on price, performance, durability, service rates, comfort, and style. Each shoe will have a different requirement material.