Two Sample Boots Arrived!

On Tuesday, December 8, a little after seven in the evening, at the garage entrance, Old Xu lifted a palm-thick cardboard box from the truck bed.

"From Wenzhou." He handed the box through the door. "Just this one. I brought it back for you on my way."

The box was small, wrapped with three layers of tape.

Inside were two pairs of shoes, one size 39 and one size 42. Sizes from both ends of the range. Ye had chosen wisely.

He picked up the size 39 shoe.

The fleece had been upgraded a grade. He shoved his hand into the folded cuff, grabbed a handful, then let go, and the fur sprang back up on its own. The ring around the cuff connected directly to the lining, not some fake strip of fur sewn on afterward. The stitching was dense, without a single skipped stitch all the way down. The sole had bounce when pressed, not the kind of soft sole that flattened after two days of walking.

He had chosen the material, upgraded the fleece, and insisted the sole could not be downgraded.

After three months, the first pair of shoes made according to his requirements had arrived.

The previous batch had been stock others couldn't sell, which he had picked up cheap. This batch, from which grade of fabric to use to how many pairs went in each carton, had all been item by item decided by him at that glass-topped table.

Eighteen yuan sixty a pair, eight yuan more expensive than the clearance stock. The extra cost was for having the final say.

"Bro, let me try them."

Ma Le rose from his stool and kicked off one slipper.

"What are you trying? These are women's boots."

"I can wear the 42s." Ma Le had already snatched the size 42 shoe. "My feet are size 41."

He actually shoved it on, slipped his foot all the way in, then stood and took two steps by the garage entrance.

"The fleece really is comfortable." Ma Le looked down, walked to the doorframe, then turned back. "But the shaft's loose, bro."

Lin Fan looked up.

"Where's it loose?"

"Right around the top." Ma Le stuck his fingers into the boot opening, half his palm disappearing inside. "Look, there's this much room."

Lin Fan crouched down.

Ma Le had a man's legs, his calves a full size thicker than a woman's. Yet with the boot around his leg, half a palm could still fit inside.

He stood and walked deeper into the garage, digging out a size 40 pair from the pile of bags in the back.

They were leftovers from the two hundred pairs of broken sizes from Wu's factory last month, domestic-market goods made by the original factory, from the batch that sold for thirty-nine yuan.

The two shoes were placed side by side on the floor.

At a glance, they looked no different. Both had fur cuffs, short shafts, rounded toes, and the same color.

He pulled a shoelace from one of the bags, wrapped it once around the opening of the new sample boot, and pinched the spot with his fingers.

Then he used that length to wrap around the old one.

When he finished, there was still a section left over, dangling against the upper.

More than two finger-widths.

"These two are different," Ma Le leaned in.

"The size is the same. The boot opening isn't."

He picked up both shoes, one in each hand, and held them beneath the light.

The opening on the new one flared outward.

The breath in his chest sank.

The last controlled the foot. The pattern controlled the leg.

Last Thursday, when he had stood before that row of iron racks and seen lasts from size 38 to 42, he had been so happy that he'd spent the entire ride back calculating the money and production time they would save. They had saved on the lasts.

No one had told him about the patterns.

That factory had been making exports for over ten years. From the lasts to the size charts to the packing standards, everything followed the foreign buyers' specifications. Foreigners had thicker legs, so the export patterns were cut for their calf measurements. They had been doing it that way for over a decade, and not a single pair of domestic-market shoes had ever come off those two production lines.

Old Chen had followed the instructions exactly. He hadn't made a single mistake.

Whatever the drawings specified was what came out. That was how he had worked for thirty years.

Lin Fan hadn't considered this in Wenzhou.

And even if he had, it would have been useless. Until the shoes were made, no one could know how loose that opening would be. That was exactly what sample shoes were for. Ye's words—"I won't dare start production until you approve the sample shoes"—were a rule built up over more than ten years of export orders. Just yesterday, he had thought the step was a waste of time.

"Bro." Ma Le pulled off the shoe. "What's wrong with it being a little loose? Everyone wears thick socks in winter. My mom wears three layers inside and out in winter."

"Put them on and walk a few steps."

"I just did."

"Did they slide down?"

Ma Le froze for a moment, then put the shoe back on and walked back and forth through the garage.

On his third lap, he stopped on his own.

"It slid down a bit."

"If it slides down, your ankle gets exposed." Lin Fan put away the old pair on the floor. "Snow boots are short to begin with, only about a handspan high. Once the opening loosens, walk two streets and they'll bunch up on the top of your feet, leaving a ring of sock exposed."

"That doesn't look that bad."

"It doesn't look bad in the pictures."

It really didn't look bad in the pictures. Laid out on white cloth under bright lights, with the cuff propped open and the fleece fluffed up, it looked worth forty-nine yuan. Buyers looked at the photos on their computers, and they paid on their computers.

Looking ugly when worn was something that happened on the third day after the package arrived.

And everything that happened on the third day ended up in the reviews.

People wearing size 39 and above had trouble finding shoes all year long. If they finally found a shop where they could buy some, only for their first pair to arrive loose and sliding down, they would turn around and leave for good. The two hundred and forty customers from last month had already left once. He had given away more than a hundred scarves just to suppress the mess in the reviews.

The pool of more than fifty-six hundred returning customers had been built order by order since August. The crown rating had been earned review by review from those people.

These three thousand pairs were not clearance stock. They were the first batch from his own factory, the model for every batch that would follow.

If the first batch was loose, every batch after it would be loose.

At 7:40, he called Wenzhou.

Ye was in the workshop. Machines roared on the other end, and Ye had to shout twice before he could hear clearly.

"The shoes arrived?" Ye's voice was bright and loud. "How are they? Old Chen didn't leave all night yesterday. He personally ran the machines for both pairs."

"The fleece is right, the stitching is right, the sole is right. The cuff is better than the previous batch."

"Then they're good?"

"Ye, the boot opening isn't."

The machine noise on the other end faded, as if he had stepped out of the workshop.

"What's wrong with the opening?"

"It's too big."

"That can't be." Ye's tone remained gentle. "We've used this pattern for over ten years. Nothing's ever gone wrong."

"Please get Old Chen."

After half a minute, someone else took the phone.

"Manager Ma." Old Chen's voice was dry.

"Master Chen, the pattern was cut according to the export version, right?"

"Yes," Old Chen said. "I've used that pattern for eleven years without changing a single bit."

"Are there any female workers at the factory?"

"Yes. Half the people sewing uppers are women."

"Find one. Have her put on the size 42 and walk around twice."

There was silence for two seconds.

"Manager Ma, how can a woman put on a size 42 shoe?"

"Have her wear a few extra pairs of socks."

Old Chen gave a laugh, an impatient one.

"Fine. I'll go."

The phone was set down on something hard. Footsteps sounded from the other end, moving away, then coming back.

Four minutes.

"Manager Ma."

"I'm here."

Old Chen's voice had changed.

"You're right."

"Does it wobble?"

"It wobbles." Old Chen paused. "I had Little Li put them on and walk twice. By the time she reached the door, the opening had bunched down. Then I found someone with size 39 feet and had her wear the size 39 pair. Same thing."

Someone spoke beside him, and Old Chen answered with a couple of grunts.

"I've made shoes for thirty years, all for export," he said. "I'm used to cutting that opening for foreigners' legs. No one ever told me it wobbled because their legs are thicker. It fits them just right."

"I need them for Chinese legs."

"How much should we take in?"

"I don't know how to make shoes," Lin Fan said. "Take in the size 39 according to your judgment, enough that it won't slip down when worn, and so the folded cuff covers the ankle. You know better than I do how much to take in."

"I can handle that." The sound of a pen scratching across paper came from Old Chen's end. "One day to redo the pattern. Two days to remake the samples."

"One day to ship them here."

"Four days," Old Chen said.

Four days.

The planned loading date of the fifteenth was gone. Starting the modification tomorrow, the samples would be ready on the eleventh and arrive in Hangzhou on the twelfth. Once he approved them, the factory would start production on the afternoon of the twelfth. Three thousand pairs, two lines producing eight hundred a day. They wouldn't hit full output for the first two days, so they would finish on the seventeenth. Load on the seventeenth, arrive in Jianqiao on the nineteenth or twentieth.

The original plan had been to load on the fifteenth, arrive in Hangzhou on the seventeenth, and list the product on the eighteenth.

Four more days of delay.

The store had only around seventy pairs left in sizes 40 and up. The listing sold dozens a day. It would have to be taken down before the day they ran out. A listing that went out of stock would sink in the rankings, and the money and time needed to pull it back up would cost more than these four days.

Forty-three thousand eight hundred yuan for materials, six thousand yuan for the processing deposit. Fifty thousand yuan was already sitting in Wenzhou, and it had yet to become a single pair of sellable shoes.

In mid-December, the employees' linked accounts would be reviewed. Today was the eighth.

He would still give them these four days.

The first pattern would define every batch to come. If this version was corrected, the second and third batches could follow it, all the way through the New Year, and they would never need to revisit this issue. Four days to buy a pattern would save forty days later.

"Master Chen."

"Go ahead."

"Once this version is modified, don't let a single pair come off the line until I approve it."

"I understand that," Old Chen said. "Our factory may not have much else, but we do have rules."

After hanging up, Ma Le was putting the size 42 shoe on for the third time.

"Bro, what are you going to do these four days?"

"Wait."

"Just wait around?"

He didn't answer. He put the two sample boots back in the box and carried it upstairs.

A kraft-paper envelope lay under a paperweight on the desk. He had brought it back from the meeting room on November 26. Two sheets of paper lay spread inside, with two lines Zheng Haifeng had drawn in pencil still visible at the edges.

Deliver before the New Year.

Rectification in mid-December.

He didn't have to sit around and wait these four days.