Description
Build the Foundation for Your Footwear Future
Start with the books. Build your foundation. Then continue into the complete Shoemakers Academy All Access curriculum.
If you’re serious about:
- Starting a shoe company
- Building a footwear brand
- Becoming a shoe designer
- Developing footwear products
- Understanding shoe manufacturing
- Preparing for a footwear career
- Advancing your technical footwear knowledge
the Shoemakers Academy Pro Pack Bundle is a practical place to begin.
Build a Broad Footwear Foundation
Successful footwear professionals need to understand how different parts of the industry connect.
A designer benefits from understanding manufacturing.
A developer needs to understand materials, lasts, patterns, costing, and factories.
A brand founder needs to understand the entire process.
The result is more than a collection of books. It is a footwear-industry reference library you can return to as your skills, projects, and career develop.
The Pro Pack helps you build knowledge across subjects such as:
- Shoe design and development
- Footwear manufacturing
- Shoe materials
- Last design
- Footwear pattern making
- Product specifications
- Factory sourcing
- Brand development
- Shoe company start-up
- Product planning
- Costing and margins
- Footwear production
- Importing and distribution
- Footwear-industry terminology
Start With the Pro Pack
Then Build Professional Skills.
This is the most important progression I would add to the product page.
The Pro Pack gives you the knowledge foundation.
When you’re ready to move from reading into structured professional training, the next step is the Shoemakers Academy All Access Pass.
. Next Step:
Shoemakers Academy All Access Pass
The All Access Pass expands the subjects introduced in the Pro Pack into a complete online footwear training curriculum.
Instead of reading about a topic and stopping there, you can progress into video courses, professional exercises, technical files, spreadsheets, certificates, and more specialized footwear subjects.
The All Access curriculum includes training in areas such as:
- Shoemaking for Designers and Brand Builders
- Shoe Company Start-Up
- Footwear Tooling Design and Development
- Shoe Material Selection
- Creating Footwear Specifications
- Footwear Cost Calculation
- Cost Engineering
- Quality Control
- Shoe Factory Operations
- Footwear Fitting and Comfort
- Sustainability
- Import Duty
- Footwear Development
- Factory Communication
- Sneaker Authentication
- Digital design skills
From Footwear Knowledge to Professional Capability
Build Your Footwear Career Step by Step
Step 1 — Build the foundation
Read the Pro Pack textbooks and learn the language, materials, construction, patterns, lasts, manufacturing, and business of footwear.
Step 2 — Develop professional skills
Move into the All Access Pass and study specifications, costing, tooling, quality, fit, sourcing, development, and factory communication.
Step 3 — Apply the knowledge
Use the training on your own footwear project, brand, job, or professional-development goals.
Step 4 — Advance your career
Build broader technical knowledge that can help you contribute more effectively across footwear design, development, sourcing, product management, and entrepreneurship.
Read the fundamentals. Build the skills. Apply the knowledge. Advance your footwear career.
- What if you had access to the same footwear training materials developed for an 11 billion-dollar retail GIANT?
- What if you could get your hands the very same footwear textbooks used by the country’s Leading Sporting Goods Marketing Master’s Degree Program?
- Now you can download the same shoemaking books used to train the staff of the world’s top shoe brands?
- Would you be interested to know these same books have been translated and are used by Spanish, Chinese, and Vietnamese-speaking shoemakers?
- What if you could learn about shoe design and the shoe business from an actual working footwear professional?
- Are you ready to live your dream of launching a new shoe brand or elevate your existing shoe company with an industry expert as your guide?
- Do you want to tap into the expertise of a 25-year veteran in the shoe-making industry?
- What if I was so sure these books boost your footwear career that we offered you a no questions asked 30-day money-back guarantee?
- Okay – if you don’t find these books valuable, then send them back!
If this all sounds good you then give The Shoemakers Academy Pro Pack Bundle a try!
Delivered by Mail:
1. How Shoes are Made
2. Shoe Material Design Guide
3. How To Start Your Own Shoe Company
4. Footwear Pattern Making and Last Design
5. Cut-paper shoe pattern from our factory.
6. Blueprint for an EVA & rubber running shoe outsole unit from our factory.
Delivered by Instant Download – Materials not offered anywhere else:
- How Shoes are Made – PDF ebook
- Shoe Material Design Guide – PDF ebook
- How To Start Your Own Shoe Company – PDF ebook
- Footwear Pattern Making and Last Design – PDF ebook
- Cut-paper shoe pattern from our factory – PDF and live vector .ai formats.
- Blueprint for an EVA & rubber running shoe outsole unit. PDF and a live vector file.
- Real factory shoe pattern – PDF and live vector .ai formats.
- Sample shoe specification drawing, 8 pages – PDF and .ai formats.
- Complete line item shoe specification – .xls format.
- 3D print files for size 9 shoe last – STL format.
- Die-cut files to make a cardboard shoe last.
- Shoe size run calculator – .xls format.
- Start-up shoe company profit margin calculator – .xls format.
- The graded pattern for Arris running shoe – PDF and .ai formats.
- The graded pattern for a women’s T-Strap high heel shoe – PDF and .ai formats.
The footwear industry has its own vocabulary, processes, materials, tools, and business systems.
Trying to learn everything while simultaneously developing a product or starting a job can be overwhelming.
The Pro Pack gives you a structured reference foundation so that advanced topics make more sense when you encounter them.
For entrepreneurs, that can mean asking better questions before spending money.
For designers, it can mean understanding how designs are manufactured.
For developers, it can mean seeing how materials, lasts, patterns, production, and business requirements connect.
For students and career changers, it can mean arriving at interviews, internships, or training with a stronger understanding of the industry.
The Pro Pack is especially useful for:
- Aspiring shoe and sneaker designers
- Footwear developers
- Product managers
- Brand founders
- Footwear entrepreneurs
- Shoemakers
- Fashion and product-design students
- Career changers
- Sourcing professionals
- Existing footwear professionals
- Anyone preparing to launch a shoe company
It is a good starting point if you’re asking questions such as:
- How are shoes designed and manufactured?
- What skills do footwear developers need?
- How do I start a shoe brand?
- How do shoe factories work?
- How are footwear materials selected?
- What is a shoe last?
- How are shoe patterns made?
- How do I communicate with a footwear factory?
- How do I prepare for a career in footwear?
The Pro Pack is also a strong starting point for people who want to work in footwear, not only start a company.
It can help build foundational knowledge for careers in:
Footwear Design
Understand how materials, patterns, lasts, factories, and production affect your designs.
Footwear Development
Build a broader understanding of how products move from design into manufacturing.
Product Management
Learn how product, cost, timing, sourcing, and business decisions interact.
Footwear Sourcing
Understand the terminology, materials, construction, and factory processes behind the products you manage.
Footwear Entrepreneurship
Build the technical and business knowledge needed before investing heavily in a new shoe brand.
Students and Career Changers
Develop footwear-industry vocabulary and practical knowledge before pursuing internships, jobs, or more advanced technical training.
The goal is not simply to know more about shoes.
The goal is to become more fluent in how the footwear industry actually works.
Learn How to Start a Shoe Company
Building a footwear brand requires much more than creating an attractive shoe.
Learn about:
- Brand identity
- Product planning
- Footwear design
- Finding designers
- Factory sourcing
- Product development
- Raising capital
- Importing
- Marketing
- Sales
- Distribution
- Business operations
Understand Pattern Making & Shoe Lasts
The pattern and last form the technical foundation of footwear.
Learn how lasts affect:
- Fit
- Shape
- Proportion
- Sizing
- Function
- Style
Then explore how footwear patterns are developed from the last and prepared for production.
This knowledge is particularly valuable for aspiring designers and developers who want to better understand how a two-dimensional design becomes a three-dimensional product.
Learn How to Select Footwear Materials
Understand the materials used throughout modern footwear, including:
- Leather
- Textiles
- Synthetics
- Foams
- Reinforcements
- Outsoles
- Midsoles
- Footbeds
- Hardware
- Adhesives
Learn how material choices influence appearance, performance, manufacturability, quality, and cost.
nderstand How Shoes Are Made
Learn how modern footwear moves from concept through development and into production.
Build familiarity with:
- Shoe construction
- Footwear materials
- Lasts and patterns
- Outsole development
- Factory operations
- Costing
- Quality control
- Production processes
This gives designers, developers, and entrepreneurs a stronger understanding of what happens after a shoe leaves the sketchbook.
Together, the four books create a clear learning sequence: understand how shoes are made → learn the materials → understand lasts and patterns → learn how to build the business.
How Shoes Are Made
A practical introduction to the modern footwear industry. Learn how shoes move from design through development, materials, costing, manufacturing, quality control, and production. Ideal for aspiring designers, developers, brand founders, students, and anyone building a career in footwear.
Shoe Material Design Guide
Learn how professional footwear teams select, evaluate, specify, and source shoe materials. Covers leather, textiles, synthetics, foams, outsoles, midsoles, hardware, adhesives, testing, costing, and material supply chains—essential knowledge for designers, developers, and sourcing professionals.
Footwear Pattern Making and Last Design
Learn the technical foundations behind shoe fit, shape, and construction. This guide introduces shoe lasts, last measurements, pattern-making techniques, grading, and the process of transforming a three-dimensional shoe design into production-ready patterns. Valuable for designers, developers, shoemakers, and technical footwear professionals.
Start Your Own Shoe Company
A step-by-step guide to turning a footwear idea into a real business. Learn about brand development, product planning, shoe design, factory sourcing, manufacturing, start-up costs, marketing, sales, importing, and distribution. Designed for footwear entrepreneurs and future brand founders.
One of the greatest advantages of the All Access Pass is that you can study how the individual disciplines of footwear connect.
A professional developer, for example, may need to understand:
- How the designer communicates the concept
- How the last controls fit and proportion
- How patterns turn the design into cut components
- How materials are selected and specified
- How outsole tooling is created
- How samples are reviewed
- How factory costs are calculated
- How fit and quality are evaluated
- How the product becomes production-ready
The curriculum allows you to move across these subjects instead of learning them as disconnected skills.
That makes the All Access Pass particularly useful for people who want to understand how a real footwear product moves from concept to commercialization.
The All Access Pass is entirely online and on demand.
You receive five years of access, allowing you to work through the curriculum at your own pace and return to technical subjects when they become relevant to your work or projects.
That makes the program especially useful for working professionals who may need to study:
- Materials during one project
- Costing during another
- Tooling when developing a new outsole
- Quality control before production
- Fit when reviewing samples
Instead of completing a course once and losing access, you can use the curriculum as a long-term professional reference.
The All Access Pass also includes a substantial library of professional footwear resources.
Current bonus materials include:
- How Shoes Are Made eBook
- Shoe Material Design Guide eBook
- Start Your Own Shoe Company eBook
- Footwear Pattern Making and Last Design eBook
- How to Spot Fake Sneakers eBook
- Factory shoe patterns
- Footwear specification examples
- Interactive cost and margin spreadsheets
- Shoe-size calculators
- Start-up profit-margin calculators
- Outsole blueprints
- 3D shoe-last files
- Pattern files
- Technical drawings
- Factory documents
These resources help bridge the gap between theory and the kinds of documents used during actual footwear development.
The Shoemakers Academy curriculum is taught by footwear professionals and built around practical design, development, manufacturing, sourcing, and product-development experience.
The current program includes course materials that Shoemakers Academy says are used by universities, trade schools, industry professionals, and footwear-company training programs.
For students and career changers, that means learning the terminology and processes used by working footwear teams.
For experienced professionals, it provides a structured way to broaden technical knowledge beyond a single specialty.
Students receive a personalized digital Certificate of Completion for each course completed.
I would strengthen this section on the current page by connecting certificates to career development:
Use your completed courses to document continuing professional education, demonstrate initiative, and support conversations about your footwear knowledge during interviews, performance reviews, or internal career development.
I would be careful not to imply that the certificates are accredited credentials unless they actually are.
All Access Pass students currently receive a complimentary Footwear Start-Up Project Review Session, listed as a $399 value, plus access to discounted personal coaching.
This is an important differentiator.
Online training can teach the process, but eventually students encounter questions specific to their own careers, brands, or products.
That creates a natural progression:
Learn → Apply → Review → Improve
For entrepreneurs, the consultation can help evaluate a footwear project.
For professionals and career changers, coaching can help identify knowledge gaps and determine which technical skills to develop next.
ou can spend years learning footwear one project, factory visit, and mistake at a time.
Or you can build a structured understanding of the entire process.
The Shoemakers Academy All Access Pass brings footwear design, development, materials, tooling, costing, manufacturing, quality, business, and factory communication together into one professional learning program.
Whether your goal is to:
land your first footwear job, move into a more technical role, become a stronger designer or developer, launch your own shoe company, or simply understand the industry at a deeper level—this is the complete Shoemakers Academy curriculum.
Start Building Your Footwear Career Today
195+ lessons. 60+ hours of training. Five years of access. One complete footwear-development curriculum.
The All Access Pass currently provides:
- 195+ footwear lessons
- 60+ hours of video instruction
- Access to the complete current online course catalog
- Access to future courses released during the five-year access period
- Multiple footwear-industry eBooks
- Technical documents and factory files
- Interactive spreadsheets and calculators
- Certificates of completion
- Complimentary project-review consultation
- Discounted coaching
- Five years of on-demand access
- 90-day money-back guarantee Shoemakers Academy
Seb –
I have many of your books.
I want to thank you for your work in putting all this information on a document. I am an experienced footwear technician but at the beginning when I transitioned from being a traditional Bootmaker I had to put so much energy into researching and educating myself to modern footwear manufacturing.
Your books are a great way to have a reference when needing to explain something to fashion designers or new suppliers.
Thanks for your work and let me know if you ever visiting Melbourne Australia. We might also cross paths in Asia. – Seb
Dave –
I bought these books for myself and now this Pro Pack with books and documents is required reading for our new hires. Worth every penny. We have also been able to have some Q&A sessions on Zoom with Wade which were integral to getting staff members up to speed fast.
AJM –
As a design student and young professional, I find the How Shoes are Made textbook series incredibly valuable. It provides professional insight into the processes of production, design, and business that would take years of on-the-job training to learn. Thank you for sharing your knowledge and resources like this!
D. West –
I have found extreme value in these books and documents. Useful photos and clear descriptions and explanations of the shoemaking process from A-Z inside Chinese factories.
R.P. –
J’enseigne la cordonnerie et je suis chausseur depuis 30 ans. Vos livres restent une véritable source de découverte et d’efficacité!
Jean-Luc
(I teach shoemaking and have been a shoemaker for 30 years. Your books remain a real source of discovery and efficiency!)
Andy A –
I am a student at the University of Oregon’s Sports Product Management Masters program in Elizabeth Brock Jones’ class and ordered books from you guys. The books are amazing and I am learning a lot from them. They are some of the most enjoyable textbooks I have read. I would be glad to provide some more comments if you would like. – Andy A
EBJ (verified owner) –
MY FAVORITE SNEAKER BOOKS! I’ve used these books every single time I’ve taught my course…meaning I’ve used them 17x so far! Highly recommend. Also a great birthday or holiday gift for the sneaker nerds in your life! – The Sneaker Prof
Angus W –
Love your books! Bought them and used them as default reading for all new hires in my team at the last 2 companies.
Jeremy R. –
I have purchased all your books in the past and they are excellent. I find them very helpful to me personally.
Thank you for spending your time to educate the world on footwear. We appreciate it.
dgshowtime –
Love the new courses and website for y’all!!! 🔥🔥🔥 nothing like growth and new beginnings! Well deserved. A “graduation” if you will. Onward and upward!! Still enjoy reading your books — they’re excellent!!
K. R. –
This is my holiday gift to myself! I am working my way through the ebooks and can’t wait for the textbooks to arrive. They will be a valuable addition to my resource library. The information is very well put together, comprehensive, and easy to understand. Wade and team, you are appreciated for the work you put into them.
Sue B. –
Great materials to build a foundation of skills
I bought the Pro Pack and have been learning step-by-step how to get my brand launched on the business end, designs together on the creative end, and now getting my samples made. Huge time savings to have all this information in one place. I could not have gotten this far without the information in these books. Every detail is covered. Great materials to build a foundation of skills.
Mr. Osokoya –
I have purchased all of these books, and they are a wealth of insight and information. Furthermore, I have been able to email Wade and received helpful responses from him. Really recommended.
Jim –
Great value if you are starting a shoe business or a footwear designer. In depth review of all aspects of modern shoemaking. Technical details and real-life examples of working as a designer or product manager. Diagrams clearly show how materials are used inside and outside of many different shoe types including Nike and Vans. Learn how to make detailed material specifications and how to read a costing sheet. I have these on my desk and refer to them daily. Highly recommend.
Sneaker Professor –
I searched high and low for books to use for my classes and when I found these books I almost cried! These books are packed with critical information and images to help you understand the process! Highly recommend!