About Vinyl Boots
Unless we choose to walk around barefoot, there will always be some form of environmental impact in making footwear. Animal hide means sacrificing a soul and the land needed to cultivate them.
On the other hand, plastic takes a long time to decompose - estimated to take a few hundred to thousands of years.
More and more customers have been asking for footwear that does not involve leather. When we first launched Smart Doll back in 2014, some of our shoes had PVC components. However, fake leather tends to start flaking over time which is why I avoid it.
We have been experimenting with vinyl-ification of our leather footwear - a process where we create a vinyl replica using silicone and wax to create a slush cast mold.
We need to make some modifications so that the foot can actually fit inside vinyl boots. For example, boots must have a slit at the back with a hole at the end to prevent the slit from tearing.
But even with the slit at the back of the boots, the vinyl must be cast so that it's on the thin side - or the vinyl won't flex enough to get the foot out of the boot.
The advantage of vinyl boots over leather is that the vinyl can be painted to match your wardrobe if you are a dab hand at craftwork.
Vinyl boots have high upfront development costs, but the long-term costs are less than leather, meaning they cost less (and thus priced less) than their leather counterpart - but most importantly - vinyl boots do not involve the cost of a life.
