By the time a sneaker reaches your feet, it has passed through somewhere between 30 and 60 pairs of hands: cutting, gluing, stitching, lasting, packing. You will almost never see a single one of them. The work happens in a few places far away, behind a chain most brands could not walk you through if you asked. This is where shoes really come from, the human cost that never makes it onto the label, and what a chain you can actually see, and stand in, looks like instead.
Where shoes are actually made
Most of the world's shoes come from a handful of Asian countries
If you own a pair of trainers, the odds are they were made in Asia. Around 88% of the world's shoes are. China is still the giant, making more than half of all footwear and over 60% of what gets exported. India has climbed to second place in production and Vietnam to third, but Vietnam's real story is the branded one: it now makes around half of all Nike shoes and a large slice of Adidas. That shift out of China happened fast, pushed less by ideals than by the US trade war and tariffs from 2018 onward, plus rising Chinese wages, with brands spreading their bets across Vietnam, Indonesia, Cambodia and India. It is not obviously good or bad. The work moved, but the low-cost model moved with it, and so did the questions that come with it.
Production sits in Asia not only because wages there are a fraction of European levels, but because of decades of accumulated skill and dense supplier networks, where the foam, the soles, the laces and the fabric are all made within hours of the assembly line. Footwear manufacturing employs on the order of twenty million people worldwide, the overwhelming majority of them in the global south, and a large share of them women.
Europe, by contrast, makes only a small slice, a bit over a tenth of the world's shoes, mostly at the premium and craft end, concentrated in Italy, Portugal, Spain and parts of Eastern Europe. So "where is it made" is rarely a neutral detail. It usually decides who made it, under which laws, and for what pay.
The human cost that does not make the label
Chemicals, hours, and hands you never see
Footwear is one of the most hands-on things you can manufacture, and that has a human side the marketing rarely shows. The work leans heavily on solvents and glues, some of them genuinely hazardous, and in the lowest-cost factories worker protection has long been documented as patchy. The journalist Tansy Hoskins, who spent years reporting the industry for her book Foot Work, argues footwear sits roughly a decade behind clothing on wages and conditions, and escapes much of the scrutiny that hit fashion after disasters like Rana Plaza. Less spotlight means more goes unseen.
A few things recur wherever the cost is lowest. The workforce is overwhelmingly women, often young and recently arrived from the countryside, and the industry as it runs today could not exist without them. Pay can be startling next to the price tag: workers have described earning under 200 euros a month to finish boots that sell for about the same amount in a European shop. And below even the factories sits a hidden tier, hundreds of millions of homeworkers with no contract, paid by the piece, sometimes storing the same flammable glue in the rooms where their children sleep. Investigations keep turning up the same things, including child labour and links to forced labour, which is part of why the EU is now tightening its import rules.
The leather end of the industry carries its own, separate cost. Tanning is chemical-heavy work, and in the worst tannery districts the health toll on workers is severe. We go into that in detail on our vegan sneakers page, because it is part of why we use no leather at all.
None of this means everyone making shoes is mistreated. Plenty of factories are decent. The point is narrower and harder: when the chain is long, opaque and far away, you have no way of knowing, and "no way of knowing" has quietly become the industry default.
Why "made in" is only half the story
A label tells you about assembly, not the whole chain
Even a reassuring "made in" label only describes where the shoe was put together, not where its parts came from. A shoe assembled in one country is often built from components made in another, and the upstream material ecosystem still runs largely through Asia even when final assembly moves elsewhere. So a clean-sounding origin can sit on top of a supply chain you cannot see.
There is even a legal version of this in Europe. Under a long-standing EU arrangement, leather can be cut in Italy, shipped to lower-cost countries in Eastern Europe to be stitched and assembled, then brought back duty-free to earn a "Made in Italy" label and a premium price. The label is not lying, exactly. It just describes the last step, not the journey.
That is the honest catch, and it applies to small brands too, including us. The useful question is not just the country on the box. It is whether a brand can tell you the actual steps: who coordinated it, who made the sole, who assembled it, and where the materials came from. A chain you can name is a chain you can check.
What a chain you can see looks like
The test, before the example
A more transparent footwear chain tends to share a few traits. It is short, with few enough steps that a brand can name each one. It sits in a place with enforced labour law, so pay and conditions are not a mystery. The partners are named, not hidden behind an agent. And the brand is honest about the parts that are not local, rather than rounding a "made in Europe" sticker up to a clean conscience.
You can hold any brand to that. Ask them to walk you through the chain. The ones who can usually will.
Where Nooch fits
Our own chain, named
Here is ours, in plain order, because we would rather show it than badge it. A faceless chain becomes a chain with names.
A Nooch is made in Portugal, in and around the footwear region near Porto that has built shoes for generations. A partner called Selco, in Porto, coordinates the chain and the sourcing. The soles are made by a long-running Portuguese sole maker, ForEver, part of Procalçado. The shoe itself is assembled by Eurovilde, a family factory in Felgueiras, which works under EU labour law and has a written sustainability policy that commits to the International Labour Organization's standards on workers' rights. It is a short chain, in one country, with every step named.
Portugal is not a loophole. It runs on EU labour law, full social security, and a legal minimum wage that rises every year, around 920 euros a month in 2026, paid across fourteen cheques a year. That is below the Northern European average, and the cost of living is lower to match, so it is not the same as a Dutch wage. But it is a real, regulated wage in a country with strong rule of law, which is a different world from the few-dollars-an-hour end of the global industry. We will not dress it up as more than that, and we will not pretend it is less.
The honest part on materials, because the section above demands it. Right now, the two materials that matter most still travel in. The soles are shaped here in Portugal, but from a natural-rubber material made elsewhere, and the upper, a mushroom-and-cellulose material, is grown by a specialist maker outside Europe and shipped in by sea, not flown. The plan is to bring the making of the sole material into our Portuguese maker too, so that in time only the upper would travel in. We are not there yet. So we are not claiming a perfect, all-European chain. We are claiming a short and named one, in a place with real labour law, that we can walk you through, and we will tell you the parts that are still on their way.
What a small brand can actually do
We cannot audit the world, so we go and stand in it
Here is something most brands will not say out loud. We cannot audit a global supply chain the way a corporation with a compliance department can. We are small. Even for us, knowing every detail of where every material comes from is genuinely hard, and we are still building that picture.
So we do the thing a small brand actually can. We go to the factory in Felgueiras ourselves, and walk the floor. We watch the shoes being cut and lasted, and we talk to the people whose hands do it, by name. Not a staged tour with a clipboard, the real thing, because you only understand a place by standing in it. It is not a certificate, and we are not pretending it replaces an audit. But knowing the factory and the people by name, and seeing the work with our own eyes, beats a stack of paperwork from a chain you never visit. That is the quiet advantage of keeping the chain short enough to stand in. The 30 to 60 hands that make a shoe are still there. Ours just have faces we have met.
How to read a brand's supply chain
A short, honest checklist
- Can they name the steps? Who coordinates, who makes the sole, who assembles. Vagueness here is the answer.
- Where is it assembled, and under what law? A country with enforced labour standards is not a guarantee, but opacity is a warning.
- Do they separate assembly from materials? A "made in" label is about assembly. Ask where the materials came from too.
- How long is the chain? Fewer steps and shorter distances are easier to stand behind and easier to check.
- Do they admit what is not local? A brand honest about its imported parts is usually honest about the rest.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about who makes shoes
Where are most shoes made?
Mostly in Asia, which makes around 88% of the world's footwear. China is still the largest producer and exporter by far, with India second and Vietnam third in production. Vietnam has become the main hub for branded athletic shoes, making roughly half of Nike's output. Europe makes only a small, mostly premium share, including in Portugal, Italy and Spain.
Why are shoes made in Asia?
Lower wages are part of it, but the bigger reason is decades of accumulated skill and dense supplier networks, where every component is made close to the assembly line. That ecosystem is hard to rebuild elsewhere. Recent shifts toward Vietnam were driven mainly by trade tariffs and rising Chinese costs, not by better conditions.
Are shoes made ethically?
It varies widely, and the problem is that you usually cannot tell. Footwear uses hazardous chemicals, worker protection in low-cost factories is often weak, the workforce is largely women, and parts of the supply chain have been linked to child and forced labour. A long, opaque chain makes it almost impossible to know how a shoe was made.
Does "made in Europe" mean a shoe is ethical?
Not by itself. It tells you where the shoe was assembled, under which labour laws, which is meaningful, but the materials and components may still come from elsewhere, and an EU label can even cover assembly done in lower-cost countries. The better signal is whether a brand can name its whole chain, not just the final country.
Where are Nooch shoes made?
In Portugal, near Porto. A partner in Porto coordinates the chain, a Portuguese maker shapes the soles, and a family factory in Felgueiras assembles the shoe under EU labour law. For now, the sole material and the upper material are both made elsewhere and brought in, with a plan to bring sole-material production into Portugal over time.
How do you know the factory treats people well?
We go and look. Rather than rely only on paperwork, we travel to the factory in Portugal, walk the floor and talk to the people making the shoes. It is a short, named chain in a country with EU labour law, which is exactly what makes it possible to check in person.