top of page

HOMEMADE SHOE/CHAPPAL INDUSTRY

Our first visit was to Pratapnagar, an amazing village we had ever seen. This village has so much to teach to others on self reliance and hospitality. First shop we visited was of Girishbhai jansari.In this era when everyone wears a brand in their foot last thing we were expecting to see was a shoe and slippers making shop. When we started interacting with Girishbhai we get to know that the range of number, for shoes he make ranges from 0-15.He said “it is quite interesting situation to meet such person whose shoe number is 15”.he told us that he is making these chappals and shoes from ages. He has a model for each number of chappals and he cuts the material from rubber by putting that model over that rubber pad.He uses electrical mechines to make surface of rubber rough.He uses electrical mechine for stiching and if their is no electricity around then he uses manual labour. manufacturing cost for one pair of chappal is Rs 170 and he sells these at Rs 300 each.major problems he was facing while making chappals was

(a) back pain

(b)palm injury

(c)time he devote in strape making and cuts he get while making holes in strapes of chappals by nails.

By lots of brainstorming our team came up with some of designs to solve our dear Girishbhai’s problems.

Basically we designed a box which looks very much like Chessbox but there is a space between two flaps of the box. We thought that inspite of cutting leather with hand we just should make a blade with shape of chappal and of different size as of that of chappals. One has to put rubber sheet on one flap and then has to put that model of chappal made with blade over it. Then we have to close the other flap and then press it hardly so that that rubber can cut that rubber in shape of chappal.

Feedback-the most obvious feedback we got was from prof. Anil gupta.He told us that rubber is quite hard and we can use the system but we have to modify the model.Either it can be warming our blade model or doing something new.

For strapes making we proposed a different solution which was on principal of punching machine. We took the same box which we were using earlier but we had had fine holes in both flaps. Person had to insert fine sharp screws in upper flap and tighten them according to design he wants to draw on strap of chappal.then he had to put leather strape on the lower strap and close the box. Since both flaps have overlapping holes screw after penetrating throw leather will go into lower flap. Since here strapes were thin this seemed feasible.

day 2

On our second visit to Pratapnagar ,we were quite excited to meet Girishbhai and discuss our solution with him.But Girishbhai was not at his shop as he had some work in other village. We tried to talk with other people of family but they told us that they know little about Girishbhai's work.We asked them for the leather piece which we had to cut from our design and contradictory to our believe that was not leather.It was so easy to cut it increased our confidence in our model. Girishbhai perhaps would have loved our model.

e

bottom of page