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Imports imperil Jordanian makers of handcrafted shoes
"This craft is on the verge of extinction," said the head of Shoe Manufacturers Association, lamenting that Jordanian shoemakers received little support.
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An employee working for shoemaker Zuhair Shiha at the Marina workshop assembles a shoe at the shop in Jordan's capital Amman, on November 2, 2021. (AFP/Khalil Mazraawi)
H
e was once dubbed the "King of Shoes", but after decades of fashioning footwear for kings, queens and presidents, 90-year-old Jamil Kopti fears cheap imports are killing off his craft.
"We started losing customers one after another, and we kept losing stores until we closed down three shops," said Kopti, believed to be Jordan's oldest maker of handcrafted shoes.
"In the past five years, our profession began to decline dramatically in face of imported foreign shoes that flooded the market," he sighed, surveying his once prosperous workshop.
Now he has just five workers, a far cry from the 42 staff he used to employ.
And around the workshop in the popular Al-Jofeh district of Amman, hundreds of moulds lie gathering dust.
After entering the trade in 1949 at just 18, Kopti attended shoe fairs every year in Bologna and Paris.
In 1961, at a show at the University of Jordan, he met the late King Hussein and gifted him four pairs of handmade shoes.
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