The world of Tokyo Foot Tailor, born of the combined craft and experience of three companies and more.
Eastern Tokyo — with Asakusa at its heart — is home to a dense cluster of shoemakers and one of Japan's foremost shoemaking districts. The high level of craft and accumulated experience here has long supported a wide range of footwear and fashion brands. To project that craft more strongly at home and abroad, three companies have joined forces. They pool their skills and sensibilities under one banner — "MADE IN ASAKUSA" — in a new brand whose world we invite you to discover.
A new challenge from three companies with proven craft.
〈Tokyo foot tailor〉 is a brand launched in 2021. It is a project run jointly by three companies — Thunder Trading, Verb Creation, and Sarai Seika — with the aim of raising the value of the leather shoes made in Tokyo, Asakusa above all.
Thunder Trading was founded in 1966, and its predecessor company, Thunder Shoes Co., Ltd., was set up in 1971. Famous in their day for pantaloon shoes and mesh shoes, the company now runs four in-house brands of men's footwear, with proposals to suit any occasion.
Where many shoemakers are family businesses handed down through generations, Verb Creation was founded in 2003 by President Hiroaki Nakagawa, a craftsman who had trained from scratch. The company runs the semi-order original brand 〈U-DOT〉, which lets customers pick parts to build their own pair, and also operates the select shop 〈toe style works〉. Verb Creation handles a wide range of constructions, from cemented to Goodyear-welted, and is known for the strong fashion sensibility of its designs.
Sarai Seika is a men's shoemaker founded in 1956. Through the use of new materials and the development of lasts shaped to follow the foot — easing the load on it — the company builds comfort shoes for working professionals. The focus is OEM work, and the company is happy to handle small lots of under a hundred pairs.
All three companies have handled OEM work for major shoe and fashion brands, and bring decades of certified, Made-in-Japan craftsmanship to the table. Pooling that craft, they have launched 〈Tokyo Foot Tailor〉 under one slogan: "wraps, light, flexes".
Comfort built on uncompromising care in size and last
Tokyo Foot Tailor's most distinctive feature is its made-to-measure fitting service: you choose the size that best fits your own foot. Two lasts were developed by Asakusa makers and modelistas using foot-type measurement data and an understanding of Japanese last conventions, with no compromise on fit. Lengths run from 23.5 to 28.5 cm in 11 increments, and widths span C through 4E in six gradings — 66 sizes in all to find your foot. To stop the heel slipping out, the heel cup is set about a size smaller than typical ready-made shoes, and the heel curve is pronounced to keep the foot held in place. The rise from the first instep (the arch) to the second (the girth) is also tighter than standard, so the upper hugs the foot. The last is designed to grip the foot between the vamp and the heel — and that is what gives the shoe its assured, locked-in fit.
Fit is pursued not only through size and last, but through construction itself. The shoes are cement-built, but unlike a standard cement shoe the front section of the insole uses the same leather as the upper, with a leather outsole beneath. The forefoot is therefore wrapped entirely in leather — and the more it is worn, the more the leather moulds to the foot, delivering a fit unlike anything you have worn before.
Choose the design and the leather too — a one-of-a-kind pair to wear for life.
The two lasts are the A-06 (loafer last) and the A-07 (standard last). The A-06 is designed for slip-ons, with a refined, slightly fuller round toe and a pronounced heel curve. The A-07 has a straight inner line and a tight waist, finishing in a perfectly balanced round toe — neither too round nor too pointed.
The A-06 last carries five styles — a plain-toe loafer, tassel loafer and coin loafer among them — while the A-07 covers three: straight-tip, Oxford, and double-monk. Led by a director who once worked as chief buyer at a men's select shop, the line-up answers what today's market wants and draws the most out of each maker's strengths — a range of designs ready for any setting.
Every model can be ordered in the leather of the customer's choice: five leathers in total are on offer, from Charles F. Stead in the UK, Annonay in France, and a Japanese tannery — across a full 45 colours.
Tokyo Foot Tailor lets the customer choose almost everything — size, design, leather — and builds a pair for them alone. The comfort lives up to the brand's slogan, "wraps, light, flexes": you feel your foot truly enveloped, you feel a genuine lightness, and you feel the shoe bend and settle along the contour of your foot. Wider last and design ranges are on the way, and expectations for this newly born brand are building.
