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jv
JB
Prepare for a #csb
Yuketen held their annual sample sale yesterday at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Los Angeles and I just so happened to be there this weekend.
A few years ago they made a load of Cordovan stuff that they can no longer make because the factory that made them shut down and nobody (in Yuki’s words) ‘is skilled enough in the US to make these shoes how I want them made’.
They make a $1500 tassel loafer consisting of seven different colours of Cordovan for example.
Anyway, they had stock with minor imperfections and I’m talking really minor. Mine has a slight crease mark on the right shoe that is hardly visible.
I’ve met him a couple of times, have spent a fair bit on his brands previously at full price and also spent a fair chunk on Monitaly clothes yesterday (Yuki’s clothing line), so when I asked how much they’d be as I really had no idea, he said ‘for you, $300.’ And my jaw hit the floor. He was selling them to other people for $500 and on top of that, they’re a $1000 pair of shoes. So suffice to say, I’m on shoe cloud nine. Dark mahogany Horween Cordovan with Cordovan inner soles. He said they should last for ten years before maybe needing to be resoled. And perhaps a re-heel at the five year mark.
I also got a pair of Yuketen clogs and my fiancé got a pair of Yuketen trainers and some Chamula Huaraches (another of Yuki’s brands) that he gave her for free. That was a nice touch. He told us how he tried to pay the factory in Mexico that has been making the Huaraches for the Mexican market for decades more per shoe than they asked for because he wanted them to be perfect and they said no. But he kept having to return stock to them because they didn’t meet his QC standards. That was three years ago. He’s now paying them that $5 more per pair and they’re perfect every time...
Oh and they gave us a ten percent discount so the loafers were $270 in reality. All around a great day of buying stuff... $4100 worth of stuff and we gave them $725.
The first photo is the stand of Cordovan samples that Yuki was quite literally guarding. If people picked them up by touching the cordovan, he’d ask them to put them down and said ‘these are very expensive shoes, you have to hold them like this’. Was very entertaining...