There is not much left of the once flourishing clog industry in Brabant: the (souvenir) clog makers in our province can be counted on one hand. However, there is certainly still a demand for wooden footwear. From farmers and road builders, for example, but also from tourists. But the majority of ‘Dutch’ souvenir clogs nowadays come from China.
That was different thirty years ago. “At that time, almost all the souvenir clogs that you saw in the tourist shops came from here,” says Bert Verschuren, owner, together with his wife Marie-Louise Holl, of Brabant’s only souvenir clog factory, Holl Klompen in Nijnsel.
Verschuren sighs, but also understands the Chinese competition. “Tourists don’t see the difference between a clog key ring from China and one from our factory, but we do.”
He sees and feels this, among other things, in the wood. The Chinese make clogs from beech wood and at Holl Klompen they make them from poplar wood, a much lighter type. The clogs from Nijnsel are also hollowed out evenly and those from China are hollowed out by hand, so the models are all a little different.
Although they look similar to tourists, Chinese clogs are cheaper and despite the distance they are available in stores faster, Verschuren acknowledges. “We make them to order and the labor costs here make Dutch craftsmanship more expensive anyway.”
The Nijnsel keychain clogs, priced between one and three and a half euros, can be up to twice as expensive as their Chinese competitors. Yet there are stores that consciously opt for the Made in Holland –clogs, such as the souvenir shops behind customs at Eindhoven Airport and Rotterdam Airport.
Figures
In the heyday around 1900, there were nine hundred clog makers and about 9 million pairs of clogs were produced per year in the Netherlands, of which more than 2 million in Brabant. Now there are about 200,000 per year nationwide.
The profession of clog maker – both manual and mechanical – is now recognized as an intangible cultural heritage. A quarter of the Dutch clog industry used to be located in the Brabantse Meierij. Today there are only a few clog makers left in Brabant. A distinction is made between manual clog makers and those who do this with machines. The penultimate real machine clog factory in Brabant – Traa in Liempde – stopped producing clogs this year.
It is now estimated that more souvenir clogs than wearable clogs are sold in the Netherlands. But official figures are lacking. Nevertheless, Holl expects that even if the agricultural sector is significantly reduced, as the government wants, there will still be enough demand for (wearing) clogs.
She is not only active in her clog making business, but she is also chairman of the Dutch Association of Clog Makers (NVK). “Gardeners, road workers, rural residents: clogs are widely worn,” she says.
The demand for wearing clogs may be less than before, but the remaining clog makers are still making progress. Many have retired or are about to do so in recent years. And there is little or no young growth. Something that the last mechanical clog maker in Brabant, in Schijndel, also experiences. The work is already overwhelming him and to avoid more requests he wants as little publicity as possible.
Holl believes that we should be careful with the special craft. “If someone stops, you don’t just start a factory like that again,” she says. Nicole van Aarle from ‘t Klompenschuurtje in Aarle-Rixtel agrees with her. “Unfortunately, we are a dying breed, but we are doing everything we can to prevent that,” she says.
Together with her father, Van Aarle therefore mainly makes clogs by hand. “It does not mean that we manual clog makers do not have machines, but we do not run production for stores, only for our own customers.” They also give demonstrations and workshops to keep the craft alive.
3D printing
However, there are also alternative ways in which a clog can be produced easier, faster and cheaper, such as 3D printing. But according to Holl, we have not yet reached the point where a comparable quality clog can be made in this way. “And tourists really want classic wooden clogs,” she adds, while her husband Bert shows bags full of wooden blocks: hundreds of clogs in the making that are waiting to travel around the world as a souvenir of Holland.
Despite the stiff competition from China, Verschuren and Holl have every confidence in the future. They continue to believe that shops will continue to pay the (small) surcharge for real Dutch clogs. “It’s a matter of feeling,” says Verschuren. “You should just keep making such a typical Dutch product here, right?!”
