From its store on Shanghai's main commercial street, Nanjing Road, Bobu Shoes is struggling for customers as it takes on the likes of Nike and Reebok - proliferating in stores just a few doors away.
As recently as the 1980s, Bobu enjoyed a virtual monopoly on men's leather shoes here. People still flocked to Shanghai from all over the country to stock up on the city's famous brand-name goods, such as Seagull cameras. Some of those brands have already died out. Others, like White Rabbit candy, have found a new lease of life. Now Bobu and its brand for women, Lan Tang, are trying to avoid fading into the past.
Retired factory worker Yan Zhicheng remembers the cachet the Bobu name used to have: someone once offered to buy his pair right off his feet. 'At that time, the brand was really famous,' he said. 'A man tried to buy my pair because he claimed they were good for dancing.' Bobu were considered the mainland's most fashionable shoes for their sleek appearance, as opposed to the clumsy models being churned out by other state-owned factories.
In the early 1980s, Bobu had two virtually identical types of shoes, one costing 18.6 yuan a pair and the other 17.7 yuan, depending on the grade of leather. In that era, such a purchase could take up a large part of a person's monthly salary. But even if one had the money, the right sizes and styles weren't always available.
Bobu's discount store on Nanjing Road still carries on in the spirit of state planning. Shoes are displayed on a single table, with boxes of merchandise stacked behind. Six indifferent assistants ignore a single customer. Up the street at the main store, the atmosphere is better. Sales clerks wearing identical pink polo shirts circulate among customers looking at shoes on lighted shelves draped with artificial flowers.
But three-quarters of the stock are women's shoes of the Lan Tang brand. The men's shoes are at the back, next to the cash register, with dozens of models ranging in price from 150 to 500 yuan. Some of the shoes look slightly outdated - like one pair with a basket-weave pattern topped with a large buckle - but the leather is smooth and supple. 'These are the old style,' a saleswoman said. 'But we like them this way.' Apparently she meant the middle-aged women shoppers who made up most of the clientele on a recent morning.