What the journey of a pair of shoes reveals about capitalism
The Economist decided to follow those shoes. The story starts with a wish. The shoes Fatimah wants are white and camel, open-toe sandals.
They sit patiently in her online shopping cart. But at $25, they are more than she can afford. Her husband sells pentol, a meatball made mostly of flour and peanut sauce, at the market.
He gives Fatimah $3 a day to run the household. Whatever is left, she saves as pocket money. Ping! The app notifies her that the sandals are on sale for $12.
Fatimah grabs the deal. Her click sets off a process 1,000km away in Bogor, a city outside Jakarta, the capital. The shoes are made by Patris, a family firm that started selling online in 2020, during the covid-19 pandemic.
Three years later Ricco Antonius and Maria Putri Anastasia, the married owners, employ 50 staff (up from zero) and shift hundreds, perhaps thousands of pairs a day. Most of their customers are women under 40, like Fatimah. On a Thursday afternoon your correspondent climbs a flight of stairs to a two-storey warehouse: on the top floor, shelves of shoes are stacked.
The bottom floor hums with young women checking, boxing and wrapping footwear. Initially, Patris didn’t know how to sell online, says Ricco. Now, it is all about live-streaming.
Ten young women, working in shifts 24/7, flaunt sandals and slippers, mules and platforms, low and high heels, open-toe and closed-toe pumps, black and brocade shoes with fleecy, pillowy or puffy soles. They sit in brightly lit booths answering customers’ questions, and gently persuading them to tap “buy". “Everyone has their own style, some of us are enthusiastic and bubbly, others are calm and slow," says Siti Zahra Amelia, one of the sales staff.
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