CHEMIN

The figures in this document are dials, not decisions. What matters first is that we agree the structure — then we sit down and turn the dials together.

1. Brand before commerce. The account, the identity and a body of work come first. We do not take an order until there is something worth ordering from.
2. The fitting kit is repaid before anyone draws a salary. It is the partnership's first debt, not one partner's gift to the other.
3. Profits pool in Asia and get reinvested until the brand stands on its own — new samples, new styles, better fitting.
4. Made to order only. No stock, no ready-to-wear, no wholesale buy-in. Ready-to-wear is something we earn later with made-to-order money.
5. No trunk shows. We reach Asia with a canvas fitting shoe and a courier, not with a suitcase and a calendar.
6. One inbox, one voice. The client writes to Chemin, not to a shop in Singapore or an atelier in France.

Each stage has a gate. We do not start the next one until the gate is passed — that is the whole discipline of this plan.

Nothing below is a proposed number. Change any field and everything recalculates — retail, wholesale, the splits, the volume. When we've agreed a set, hit Copy link with these figures and the numbers travel with the URL, so we're all looking at the same model.

How to read it

• Two profits, two decisions. The atelier's profit is wholesale less build cost, and it splits between new samples and the maker's pocket. Asia's profit is net retail less wholesale, and it splits between the reinvestment account and the partners.
• Reinvestment starts at 100%. That is the Stage Two and Three setting. Stage Four is when we lower it — and we should write down in advance what triggers that, so nobody has to ask.
• The wholesale price is the real negotiation. Everything else follows from it. Set it too low and the atelier can't fund samples; too high and Asia can't fund the market.

Trunk shows cap you at the cities you can fly to, on the weekends you can spare. The canvas trial removes the travel from the fitting entirely — and it happens to be the best content we will ever produce.

How it works

1. Client contacts the shared inbox. They send guided measurements and photographs, or come into Singapore if they are local.
2. We ship a canvas trial shoe built on the nearest house last — cotton duck over a proper insole and a temporary sole, so it wears like a shoe rather than a sock.
3. It arrives as a kit: the trial, a marking pen, a printed legend, and a short video. The client wears it for two days at home.
4. They mark the canvas directly — where it presses, where it gapes, where the heel slips. The shoe becomes the fitting notes.
5. They photograph it and courier it back. It is light, cheap to send, and worth nothing if it goes missing.
6. The last is adjusted from the marks and the real shoe is made. A second canvas goes out only for a difficult foot.

Why this is the whole Asia strategy

That last point deserves saying plainly: a marked-up canvas shoe is proof of bespoke. Every other house photographs the finished object, which anyone can fake with a good camera. A grid of clients' canvas trials, covered in pen, is a brand argument that cannot be copied by someone who is not actually doing the work.

What has to be true for it to work

• Canvas does not behave like leather. It stretches differently and gives less. The first canvas is data, not a verdict — read it as a measurement, not as the finished fit.
• The marking legend has to be idiot-proof and printed on the shoe itself. Clients will not read a PDF.
• A short video call at the fitting — the client on camera, wearing it, walking. Ten minutes catches what photographs miss.
• Charge a fitting deposit, credited against the shoe. It covers the canvas, it covers the courier, and it filters out people who were never going to order.

The lead time is the product as much as the shoe is. A client who is told sixteen weeks and gets twenty-four will not order again and will say so publicly. So the promise needs a schedule behind it with named owners and hard gates.

• The spec locks at week zero. Every late change resets the clock, and the client is told that at the time of ordering, in writing. This single rule prevents most overruns.
• Exotic skins need their own clock. Sourcing and permits can add weeks. Quote those separately rather than promising sixteen and hoping.
• QC photographs before shipping — it catches problems while the shoe is still on the bench, not after it has crossed a border.
• If we miss, we say so early. A client told at week ten is disappointed; a client told at week sixteen is gone.

A made-to-order enquiry is half commercial and half technical. Routing it through Singapore, who then emails France, who replies a day later, doubles every exchange and loses the detail that matters. So: one address, both partners in it, one voice to the client.

• A shared mailbox, not a forwarding alias — both of us see the full history, either of us can answer.
• Every order is one thread, and the thread is the record. Fit notes, leather choice, dates, all in one place.
• Twenty-four hours to first reply, even if the reply is only that we are looking into it.
• Technical questions go to the atelier, commercial to Singapore, but the client never sees the handover.

This is also the clearest signal that we are one business rather than a supplier and a shop — and the client will feel it in the first exchange.

The reason to go hard into unusual materials is not novelty. It is that a made-to-order house competing on plain black calf is competing on execution alone, against Japanese makers who have spent thirty years perfecting exactly that. Materials are a fight we can actually win, and they photograph.

Where to play

• Exotics — alligator, crocodile, lizard, ostrich, stingray. Highest margin, highest perceived value, and the strongest images we will make.
• Special calf and horse — shell cordovan, museum calf, hatch grain, hand-antiqued finishes. Less paperwork, still clearly not ordinary.
• Patina — a French competence and a deliberate absence in the Japanese school. This should be a house signature, not an option.

A ladder, not a price

One price makes us look like a product. A ladder makes us look like a house, and gives a client somewhere to climb on their second pair. The tiers matter more than the numbers, which we set in the model above:

1. House made-to-order — standard calf, house lasts
2. Patina — hand-finished colour, our signature
3. Special leathers — shell, museum calf, hatch grain
4. Exotics — quoted per skin, with their own lead time
5. Personalised last — house last modified to the foot

The last still has to be recognisable

Whatever we do with materials, the test is whether someone scrolling past a photograph can tell it is a Chemin. One committed decision on waist and toe geometry, carried across every model, men's and women's. Interesting is not the same as unusual — it has to be a shape people want to own twice.

Women's is the open flank. Serious women's shoes made to order at men's-shoemaking quality are close to unserved in Asia, and Singapore has exactly that clientele. The canvas system works just as well for them. I would build the launch around it rather than adding it in year two.

Two things worth clearing before any money is spent: the name Chemin in EU and Singapore class 25 — it is an ordinary French word and the class is crowded — and the CITES process, if exotics are going to be a real part of this rather than a line in a document.