Jan van der Velden is a shoemaker in Kaatsheuvel. Two more years and then he will retire, but no one wants to take over the business. The shoemaker’s craft is in danger of disappearing rapidly due to the aging population. And that hurts. He talks about it in the Omroep Brabant talk show KRAAK.
It does Jan that the craft is slowly dying out. “My children do not want to take over. They think it is a beautiful craft, but my son says: you don’t think I will work as hard as you do. In the beginning it was from early in the morning until late at night “A craft is intensive. You have to understand it. About your customers, the material, the shoes and keys, because that has also been added”, says a proud shoemaker.
He has experienced beautiful things in the 45 years that he has been in his business. “A woman came to me once, very upset. She had just moved in on the street and she was going to bake fries for the grandchildren. But something had come loose while cleaning the fries basket and she couldn’t put it back together again. Then I looked at it and after fifteen minutes she came back, then I had made it. It cost nothing, it was too much fun to do.”
In twenty years, the craft could be extinct. There are about 500 shoemakers in the Netherlands. At the moment there are only 11 people on the training, but 40 are needed to keep the number up. “The aging population is hitting hard”, Jan confirms. A salient detail is that the majority of the students are women.
Maybe it’s because of the type of shoe, which is ‘in’ at the moment, Jan thinks. “Fashion is not going well. You now have sneakers and people don’t know that we can repair them too. Heel liners, insoles, there can also be a new sole. We can all make that, but people don’t know.”
“A boy came here with a shoe that was damaged. I say: ‘Then you have to polish it too. Here’s a jar of shoe polish. You put it on it, let it soak in and rub it on. He looks at me and he says: what does it cost if you do that? Five euros, I say. Here, you do it’.”
Jan hopes it helps that he tells his story. Maybe he can plant a seed in people’s minds so that they want to become shoemakers. He hopes so, because when he thinks about the last moment he will close his shop, he gets emotional. “Last time is hard, really hard. It moves me. I hope this helps.”