Recap for those just joining us.

Let me remind you where I am and who is buying my product.

Here in Malaysia, heritage boots are essentially non-existent. Or at least, for the majority of the market. In the closed-toe men’s footwear segment (above a certain price range), it’s more or less a sneaker market.

There is a small community who buys heritage boots, however this sub-culture of people are somewhat niche and brand centric. So, generally speaking, for a ‘non-branded’ boot like Outstation, it won’t be on the radar of this group of people.

There is also a very large community here (with significant overlap to the above) who buy secondhand boots.

So much so, that there are independent retailers catering to this market. They specifically import 40 foot shipping containers of second hand Red Wings, Timberland, CAT and Dr. Martens.

And, the secondhand boot community are so crazy about these brands, they’ll buy them, regardless of the condition. And not even knowing if they’re even genuine.

Now onto my product. My best sellers are boots from the Everyday line, which are closer to sneakers in how they wear. This means that my customer base is none of the above groups that I described.

Instead, my market is the late 20’s, early 30’s, overseas educated, mid-level white collar manager who is graduating from the sneaker game into something more ‘grown up’.

They’re used to sneakers in feel, weight, construction and how they change over time.

Not a traditionally made boot.

Knowledge gaps need to be filled.

Based on this, boot nerds out there can already see my problem. And why expectation management is such a large part of what I do.

Of course the situation is entirely my own fault, I designed my Everyday line specifically for a customer base that isn’t used to a product like this. So I guess there’s nobody to blame but myself.

So why did I decide to design this type of product?

To put it simply, for my market, it’s a volume game.

This is the type of boot that can be accepted by most people here (within a particular income bracket), who can digest the style, overcome their preconceptions of what a boot is, afford the price point and also use it daily.

But to get to this level of acceptance, there’s a lot of expectation management required.

O2O. Or better. Everywhere at every opportunity.

It all begins online through the official Outstationboots IG and Tiktok accounts.

I tend to think of these as purely education platforms, for people to understand the craft behind bootmaking, the materials and effort required make a pair of boots outside a factory environment.

The world is so used to cheap manufacturing and low quality products, that the ignorance of what it takes to really make a high quality product is quite extreme. So it starts here.

There’s also expectation management performed in person, offline. Where for every customer that comes to try on boots, I start with a question.

‘Have you ever owned a product like this before?’ To which the answer 90% of the time is ‘no’.

This leads me down a series of points that I need to explain, in order for them to really understand what they’re considering purchasing.

Before reading onwards, put yourself into the brain of a non-boot enthusiast. Boot nerds forget how normal people think, so for those out there currently reading, revert back to your pre-boot nerd days now.

The list that has to be covered.

Patina.

Colour is going to change. Wildly. Unpredictably. Imagine buying a product that looks a certain way, in a certain colour and being told that it’s going to change, but you can’t tell to what extent or to what colour exactly.

I not only have to expectation manage this, but also need to educate that it should be appreciated.

This is so incredibly different to the average person’s mindset, where if objects darken, scar or mark, they’re just viewed as getting old and tired. And it soon becomes time to throw them out because they look ‘ugly’.

Take any classic white pair of sneakers. AF1, Stan Smith. They may still be functional, but if they’re too dirty, they’ll just get thrown out and replaced. This is what people do in the consumption first world we’re encouraged to live in.

Remember that Asia still operates heavily on physical aesthetic. This can’t be underestimated.

Sole peel.

A wedge sole will peel slightly away from the slipsole. It’s inevitable.

For the average consumer, a peeling sole is a sign to think about throwing out a pair of shoes or doing a cheap superglue repair. So, the expectation management needed on this point is very strong.

I need to explain that it’s normal, and no, it’s not going to fall off, and yes, it can be cemented (not superglued) back into place.

And (gasp), it can even be resoled.

Since a large percentage of my customers are below 30, they’re of a generation where they don’t even know that footwear can be resoled.

In Asia, the heavy skew towards aesthetic and limited knowledge of recraftability dictates that if it ‘looks broken’, the assumption is that it ‘is broken’.

Or worse, it looks like the owner can’t afford to replace it. Ah yes. The Asian concept of ‘face value’. A story for another day again.

When I was designing products for the Everyday line, I thought hard about constructing the boots stitched through the midsole and outsole. I.e. A traditional heritage boot with heel stack. Simply to avoid noticeable sole peel.

But it wouldn’t have made sense. Because a) the lip of a welt still peels anyway, and b) the product would look too much like a boot, and the retail customer base here wouldn’t want to buy it.

Sock liner peel.

The ¾ sock liner often peels with time as the foot slips in and out. This is unheard of in sneakers, where it’s usually full length and molded into the shoe volume as part of the design.

Remember, most of my customer base comes from the sneaker market.

From a production viewpoint, I need to cement the sock liner in enough so that it stays in place, but not so much that it can’t be pulled out in order for someone to put a custom insole or orthotic in.

So I expectation manage, that yes, the sock liner can peel slightly.

Sometimes customers ask me if they can just put a custom insole on top. The discussion then moves onto explaining how shape and volume inside a boot works.

Sole gap.

‘Why is there is a gap between the heel and the upper?’ ‘Is it broken?’ ‘Water is going to get in.’

This is such a pain in the ass to expectation manage.

My customers who are used to sneaker cup soles ask this a lot. To make matters worse, since the most common boot in the market is a Timberland or Dr. Martens, this has also set the perception of how a boot looks.

That is, a boot must have a cup sole, or an injection molded outsole construction.

I have to explain that compression of the leather insole, shank and midsole, all tacked together is incredibly dense. By the time water has gotten in, you’re either standing in a river or swimming in your boots.

I’ve come to realise that people really have a disconnect between what looks functional versus what is actually functional.

And don’t even get me started about what they think they need versus what they actually need.

Heel slip.

Out of all the expectation management items to cover, this one is the easiest to explain, because to some extent it exists in other types of footwear.

So instead, I use it as an opportunity to show how a leather heel counter behaves with heat, shaping around the heel, as compared to a celastic heel counter.

This then triggers the discussion around the interior components of footwear in typical production. That is, cardboard and plastics. And, how the cost is massively lower when compared to leather everything in heritage footwear.

Most people are quite shocked at this, as it’s the easiest topic to understand. Even more so because I have the all materials at hand that can be touched and compared.

Leather behaviour.

Different from patina, I specifically address the deformation that takes place with a boot over time.

Compared to sneakers, which have far more structure through man made materials, and are designed to ‘look good’ rather than ‘wear good’, I have to warn people that after 6 months their boot will be shaped nothing like they see straight out of the box.

All of the expectation management around this point is to explain that leather is going to be reshaped. Putting it simply, their boot will become a foot shaped boot, as opposed to a boot shaped boot.

Especially so for my boots, because the Everyday line has an unstructured toe box. It’s designed to collapse.

Thank god for the internet.

Thankfully, a large part of my customer base do their own research online, and have more or less made up their mind before coming to visit me.

They simply come to do a final inspection of the product, check that I’m not a scammer and then transact in person.

And since I don’t operate out of a retail space, if they’ve come to visit me in my workshop at home, I know they’re a serious buyer. And at this point, any expectation management is reiterating information they’ve likely already consumed.

More interestingly, any additional expectation management at the point of purchase doesn’t actually matter anymore. Because their minds are already made up for whatever reason.

It doesn’t stop there.

To round it out, I also expectation management after the sale takes place.

For every box that gets shipped out with boots, there are various information cards inside re-explaining some of the points that I’d discussed with them at the point of sale.

After all, if you’re bombarded with a lot of information in a single sitting, you’re not going to retain most of it.

That’s just a fact.