Leather shoes are becoming increasingly popular because of the durability and luxury that it gives the user. However, not everyone is able to pay for a pair of high quality leather shoes because their cost is not cheap. That's why fake leather shoes with the same design but poor quality appeared densely in the market. In addition, the imitation leather market brings relatively high returns to the footwear industry. Let me trace the origins of cheap imitation leather shoes that give billions of VND.

This place is considered the birthplace of the traditional leather footwear for more than 400 years ago and the Hai Duong Provincial People's Committee awarded the certificate of traditional village in 2005.

According to the old people in the village, traditional village was very developed, but because shoes were only used by people in the city, so the skilled workers have moved to the large cities to live and continue to work. Gradually the village is undeveloped and no one makes shoes anymore. But in the early 1990's, due to the demand of the market, some decided to return to the traditional footwear industry.

Referring to those who have helped to restore the village, no one in the village was not aware of Mr. Tran Huy Thang, one of the people who had the merit of restoring the village and also the only survivor until now.

According to Thang, in 1990, he gave his son who was only 14 years old to Sai Gon to study about shoe design and shoe making. After five years, his son returned home, combined with the heirloom experience, he began to make shoes again. In the past, all the steps were manual, so the productivity was rather low and the income was not worth much. But now, many steps have been taken by machines so tens of thousands of shoes can be sold per year.

Cao Si Nghiep, owner of a leather shoe factory in the village, said the old machine is quite cheap so the households have one at thier factory. On average, an used hydraulic auto shoe casting machine is about 100-200 million VND, and the new one is nearly 1 billion. Mr. Nghieph also shared that the investment of expensive machines help to recover capital faster because productivity increased significantly. By hand, the same number of workers can only make 50 - 70 pairs per day but with the help of machinery, the productivity can increase 7 to 8 times.

In the North there are only two shoe-making villages, one is Phu Xuyen, Hanoi and the other is here. Phu Xuyen village is mainly made of high quality and expensive products, so there are few competitors of cheap leather shoes produced there.

According to Mr. Nghiep, the production of quality goods such as Phu Xuyen village brings higher profits, but any commodity is also dependent on the market, so Hai Duong traditional village is not oriented to produce too high quality products. Cheap products are always easier to sell but profit is not low, the purpose of production is to serve people with average income in society.