No kidding about shoes!

It is widely recognised that shoe care is an integral part of the overall personality of the school going students and well maintained shoes are one of the keys for their healthy feet. The students are always expected to wear clean and tidy shoes complementing their uniform and so taking extra care of school shoes right from the time of their purchase is extremely important.

Often, the school going kids have the habit of running through muddy puddles, or dirty pathways which make their shoes overly soiled and so it is important to clean them properly to maintain shoe hygiene. School shoes should be removed immediately after the kids get home from school so that any moisture or sweat inside the shoes can dry out before the next morning.

It is also necessary to wipe off the shoes whenever possible to keep them protected. Buffing is also important at the end of the day, as any damage done can usually be reversed if treated straight away.

Shining and conditioning
Polishing the school shoes every week keeps them looking their best. This also helps to make them last longer and so polishing can be done as often as everyday. Shoe polishes come in two forms: cream polishes which are for restoring color, and wax polishes which are for buffing shoes to a shine. The ideal way of polishing the school shoes is to use cream polish before applying a coat of wax polish, but it is also recommended to use wax polish only after conditioning the shoes.

Conditioning is important because, unlike our skin which is alive and receives nourishment from the body, the leather on the shoes only receives the nourishment we provide through conditioning. However, now-a-days we don’t require to apply shoe conditioner separately, as there are some liquid polishes already available in the market which offers shining and conditioning together.

For example, enriched with cleaner cum liquid shining agent like Liquid Shoe Polish, Shoe Cream and Wax Shoe Polish rejuvenates all leather shoes. With growing academic pressure at school and at home, the daily cleanliness of shoes has become another burden on kids, however with the help of innovative products such as Wax Shoe Polish, Shoe Cream and Shine On this herculean task has become easy for the kids as well as their parents.

Apart from polishing the shoes properly, we should also care for the shoe laces, as shoe laces of a school going kid can break for any number of reasons. It is important to keep some spare laces for maintaining the shoes of school going kids.

Also If the sole of the shoe wears out while all the other parts are still good, the shoes can be resoled. To maintain their shape, the shoes of the kids should be kept only on a rack or in boxes. In rainy season, school shoes gets wet, but never dry them over a radiator or heat source, instead fill with crumpled newspaper of paper and allow to dry naturally. If shoes start to smell, then a sprinkling of bicarbonate of soda in them overnight will deodorise them.

With the changing time and growing pressure on kids, the companies are coming up with innovative products in shoe care segment to make life easier for the kids as well as their parents, thus we are here to witness a sea change in shoe care industry going forward.

By: Sahil Gupta
(The writer is a Managing Director, C.P. Marketing Inc.)