Once the liner argument was settled, the real work started, and the real work isn't glamorous. It starts with getting on a plane.
A lot of planes. Back and forth to the factories, over and over, to sit in rooms and go through materials. Constructions. Styles. How much support underfoot? How much cushion?
Colors that look right on a swatch and wrong on a boot, and the other way around. Timelines. New products. New ideas. Ideas I didn't know would ever come to be. Crazy meals. Jet lag. Google Translate.
And every single time, I come home with suitcases full of boots.
Sample boots. Shoes. Sandals. Liners. Color swatches. Material samples. Interesting new concepts, in my size, of course. Stacked on a hotel bed next to a suitcase and a duffel that are very obviously not going to fit all of it. Spoiler: I make it fit. Every time. Sitting on the lid, if that's what it takes.
There was one trip where I mentioned to the factory, mostly as a joke, that my luggage wasn't going to be big enough for the samples, plus the gifts they kept giving me. That night, back at the hotel, there was a brand new suitcase waiting for me. Which was incredibly kind. And which, a few days later in Japan, also turned out not to be big enough, because now it had to hold the samples and the Japanese goodies I needed to bring home.
So I bought an even bigger one. And I left the empty one at Narita Airport.
I left it all the way open, so it was clearly empty and not, you know, scandalous. I'm fully aware this is wildly against Japanese custom and I felt genuinely bad about it. I still do a little. I hope someone was able to use it.
That's what the sampling year looked like. Not one big decision. Hundreds of small ones, made in cement rooms far from home, and carried back in whatever would close.