What's Inside Cheap Shoes
[0:00:00] Cheap shoe #1.
Let's make it happen.
[0:00:00] All right, gents, in today’s video, I’m
cutting half two of the cheapest pairs of shoes I could find on Amazon.
I'm gonna have fun with this.
Now, I think I know what's inside, but let's find out for sure.
Cheap shoe #1.
Let's make it happen.
Oh yeah!
Cheap shoe #2.
Oh yeah!
What do you guys think?
I could take both these pieces, glue them back together, and create this new style of
dress shoe.
Meaning I’ve got a future— All right, guys, let's find out what is inside cheap
dress shoes.
Okay.
So, let's talk about what is inside a pair of cheap shoes.
As you can see, not that much.
So, one of the first things I noticed as soon as I start sawing these shoes right in half
is all of the black wasn't really dust, but small pieces of basically what this is.
Plastic rubber.
I'm not sure exactly and that's the thing, is that with really cheap shoes, you're gonna
see very cheap ingredients.
So, I can tell you that any shoe made out of rubber or plastic that isn’t just made
to be like— I don’t know— a rubber rain boot, that’s not really a great thing.
Why?
Because it's not going to allow your feet to— Basically, it is gonna trap in that
moisture.
When your feet get warm, they’re gonna get hot, they're gonna sweat, and nothing is getting
out.
Now, I could see actually on the inside of these shoes they tried to cover that up a
bit by putting some materials and basically fabric in there.
And I get why they would do that.
To absorb a little bit of the sweat, of the moisture so that all of a sudden you don’t
get beads of sweat building up in there.
On the back and on the side though, I'm thinking that this is not going to do well.
I can tell that it's been glued together on the inside and it's kind of a shoddy job.
So, we start to then look at the sole.
So, right over here, I'm gonna go and I'm gonna look at the outer sole.
You could tell by whenever I look at these shoes initially on the outside that they had—
You know, this is a plastic rubber outer sole.
But what I didn't know and when we get to that heel, this is actually what surprised
me.
Notice how it's empty on the inside of the heel.
But if you think about this, this makes sense.
They're gonna save money because they're gonna use less of the whatever material they're
using and it actually does make the shoe a bit lighter.
So, I can see where maybe from a design perspective they thought this would be smarter.
I can tell you though that this, you know, really does no favors for you.
I can't tell actually if this is cardboard on the inside.
But as I play around with it, so that first layer right above the outer sole, instead
of having a cork lining, they've literally got cardboard on the inside of this.
So, you know, hey, I guess it gets the job done when nobody sees it.
Then they’ve got the insole.
So, there is no shank in this.
This right here again made from a synthetic material.
The problem here is your feet sweat.
Moisture has nowhere to go.
Now, it goes without saying that this shoe is all connected with glue.
So, when I look at insole, I look at the outsole, I look at the inside of this, everything here
there is no stitching.
There are no tacks.
There's no nails or anything like this.
This is all connected with a cement type glue.
And again, this is what we're gonna see in the majority of inexpensive shoes.
It saves money.
It's relatively less in weight.
It's a lot faster in the manufacture process.
But when it comes down to it, this is not gonna be a pair of shoes that you're gonna
wanna keep for more than a few years.
And I get it.
Some of you guys wanna own shoes, they’re fashion shoes, they’re disposable.
But what I would say— what you also pay when you're grabbing those is you're getting
something that really is never going to be that comfortable.
Now, when we look at the back of the shoe, right above the heel, we actually go and we
see that they do have a stiffener.
I'm looking at the stiffener.
I’m not actually able to tell.
It looks like it’s made out of a little bit of a plastic material.
It’s that white line right in there.
Now, that stiffener is there so whenever you’re putting on the shoe especially without a shoe
horn that basically the shoe doesn't permanently warp down.
I'm not sure that this stiffener was actually gonna provide really any support here.
So, in summary, what I found on the inside of this cheap shoe really didn’t surprise
me.
It’s using cheap materials.
It was cheaply put together using glue, faster manufacturing process.
I get it.
This is the vast majority of shoes out there.
Most guys, they've never actually had a quality pair of dress shoes.
So, they're not gonna know what to look for.
But I would highly recommend when you're out there buying shoes, the thing to do is go
try on a nice pair.
[0:05:01] Look and understand the details because it
is something, yes, you're gonna pay a lot more for, but cry once and then wear those
nice shoes with pride and all of a sudden you realize that, hey, these aren’t gonna
last me 1 or 2 years.
These are gonna last me 1 or 3 decades.
They're not gonna go out of style and this is gonna be something that’s actually—
They're gonna look better with time.
Yes.
The upper on a great pair of shoes will get better with time.
All right, gents, that’s it.
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That's it, gentlemen.
Take care.
I'll see you in the next video.
And remember, don't buy cheap shoes.
It’s just not worth it.
[0:06:42] End of Audio