Hi -- I'm an author out in CA (bio below) and a devoted fan of your shoes.  About six months ago, my friend Adisa picked up a pair for me at your factory.  She said you guys might like to hear my story.  I've been wearing a pair of your China style shoes for about 25 years. (Photo attached.)  I wore a hole in the sole, had them resoled, and they're still going strong.  I have traveled literally to all seven continents wearing those shoes.   I wore them in Antarctica (indoors).  I wore them when I interviewed the president of Mozambique. I wore them in a sumo stable in Tokyo.  I wore them on a 25-mile walk called the Death March, in Belgium, when I forgot to pack my "walking shoes."   I bought them at a used clothing store circa 1984 and had no idea where they had come from, assumed Europe, and then one day saw Adisa was wearing a pair and accosted her!   She was on her way to NY, and offered to pick me up a spiffy new pair.   I'm delighted to find that in 30 years, the quality has not changed.  They are still the perfect shoe.

Yer fan,
Mary


   
Mary Roach is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Packing for  Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void;  Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers; and Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and  Sex.  Packing for Mars is a New York Times Editor's Choice and was chosen as San Francisco  2011 One City, One Book selection.  Stiff has been translated into 17  languages, and Bonk was chosen as a 2008 best book by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Boston Globe. Mary has written for  National Geographic, Wired, New Scientist, The New York Times Book Review, the Journal of Clinical Anatomy, and Outside, among others.   She is a member of Mars Institute's Advisory Board, a guest editor of the Best American Science and Nature Writing, and a winner of the American Engineering Societies' Engineering Journalism Award, in a  category for which, let's be honest, she was the sole entrant.   More at www.maryroach.net