Globalisation wrong-foots Philippine’s small shoe business

Marikina, Philippines, Jan 4: Welcome to Marikina, population 437,000: shoe capital of the Philippines and home to Imelda Marcos’ notorious footwear collection. How things have changed.

"When I was little, there were rough roads, no lights," said 36-year old Rosalie Manuel, sitting in the doorway of the Marikina footwear museum that houses more than 600 pairs of Imelda’s shoes.

But change has also brought industrialisation and Filipino shoemakers face crushing competition from low-price, high-quality imports that threaten to render the neighbourhood unrecognisable or wipe out its shoe industry entirely.

Manuel, a guide at the museum, was born the same year flamboyant former first lady Marcos moved into the presidential palace, later amassing a collection of silk-covered slingbacks that were made in Marikina’s backyard workshops.

Since then, sprawling metropolitan Manila, home to more than 12 million people, has all but swallowed the sleepy riverside town of Marikina, turning it into one of the city’s quieter middle-class neighbourhoods.

Roadside stands now sell trendy platforms instead of Marikina’s trademark dainty, beaded slippers. Wholesale shops set up in family garages sell moulded soles from South Korea and leather from Taiwan instead of the locally made products of 50 years ago.

Yet some things here in Marikina haven’t changed at all.
Centuries-old stone houses -- a rare sight in Manila, which was nearly flattened by Allied bombs during World War Two -- still stand, some bearing bullet holes from the time when Japanese soldiers occupied the town and shoemakers joined the guerrillas in the nearby mountains.

The neighbourhood’s first shoe workshop still occupies a prominent street corner, the 400-year-old house with arched doorways now home to a cultural centre.

Inside Marikina’s family compounds, 70 per cent of all shoes in the Philippines are still made here, by hand and in small batches.
Not for long, say pessimists, who see mass production in China as the main threat.

"They do it so fast. We do it slowly because we do it by hand," said shoemaker association head Carmelita Riofrio, sitting behind an office desk littered with shoe lasts and order forms.

— Reuters