sidraqasim1

Fair point Ryan, in early days of our business we invested time in Styleforum/Reddit but the ROI was very low, so we changed our focus. But it looks like we need to get back to them, especially our new products will be very relevant to the community.

Our current target customers are more on the lifestyle sites like GearPetrol and Racked.

Let me know if you have any question, I am sidra (at) themarkhor.com

thanks TJ, Sidra here (co-founder Markhor).

Appreciate you buying our shoes and sharing the experience. The shoes indeed look great on you.

Good idea, especially the second one. Appreciate your advice.

Thanks, those are really good points and we'll take some time to think about how to communicate this better.

I mentioned pregnant women because the ones I've seen doing this work stand out vividly in my memory as examples of people who are currently working under abusive conditions and deserve much better. That's one of the reasons why we started Markhor to begin with and have been very careful. And of course they'll be welcome to make shoes for us if they want to, since the conditions of such work will be much better.

Appreciate your suggestion.

We started Markhor with a small group of craftsmen in our village. At that time (early 2012) they were making just men handcrafted shoes. So it was natural to start with just men shoes and master that before we add new products. In addition to me being CEO, 4 of our 7 team members are women - so we also feel left out. :)

But the good news is we have been working on our women collection for few months now and will be launching them very soon.

I personally would love women (or anyone) to work if they want to.

Unfortunately, exploitative situations are common in the shoe industry in developing countries and some of the most vulnerable people end up working for too little, doing work that can be physically harmful to them, and not having the option to quit. That's the kind of situation I was talking about. We're in a position to give people new options, like working for a decent wage and being able to take time off if they need to.

Right now this is in beta and we are testing this with 10 customers every week, where we make a new pair for them. In future we want to have this information available for ready to wear shoes as well and for everyone. Some people want to have all the information in just single email so we're learning from our experience and will launch what can work best for everyone.

We'll definitely look into vegan option soon. Thank you!

Making a handcrafted shoe is a physically intensive job so we are being careful towards this. Perhaps at some point, as the company grows we would be able to invest more in this area and see if it needs to be changed for some women.

Depending on the order size a craftsman make $400-800/month. Unfortunately right now our order size is not as big as we/craftsmen would like it to be, so they also have to work for other folks (middle men). Monthly average salary in Pakistan is $200-$300 and a craftsman usually works 45-50 hours/week. Sunday is full break and Friday is half day at most of the workshops.

Our derbies use the welt and we practice blake-stitching method of shoemaking.

Hi HN,

I’m the co-founder of Markhor. Our goal is to connect the customer directly with the craftsmen, who are making your products regardless of in which part of the world they're being made. Internet has enabled us to do so especially in the developing countries (this is where most of the luxury goods are made).

Today we are taking the first step towards our goal and launching our transparency project. We believe you have the right to know where and under what conditions your products are made and who is making them. We believe no one wants to wear a pair of shoes/clothing made by a child or a pregnant women under abusive conditions. Even though our craftsmen have been making European shoes for decades, it’s only now that we are able to connect them directly to the end customer.

So what transparency are we bringing to our own company? For every order or a pair of shoes, you’ll know about the craftsmen/women who made them. You’ll receive step-by-step details about the work in progress through email. This is our first step (in beta right now) in this direction and we're experimenting this with some of our customers and the Kickstarter backers.

You can see the email screenshot here: https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0427/6309/files/Markhor-Tr...

Happy to answer any questions about our products or the transparency mission in general.

-SQ