Answers: ask for more on the contact form below Press coverage: news.htm

Acknowledgements, Belts sizes, Catalogues, Cheques, Cheques and Currencies - see Overseas, Fair labour,
Childrens Shoes
Overseas: Currency conversion, Last posting dates, Airmail, Surface mail, cost price, returns stickers, replacements
postage, privacy, returns, shoe sizes and sale shoes, security, stockists

These answers have just been moved to /more.htm
What's wrong with leather, Why me?
What's veganline.com? Who? Why small?

Acknowledgements are sent automatically. We usually post shoes the same day, or at least the same week before we ask permission to delay more. We don't charge your card until the order is ready (unless you use Paypal or Nochex, but we can refund those if there is a problem). Everything on the site is usually in stock unless it says something like "ordered on the 5th & 20th of each month for delivery to you") which it might not say at all on the site just now, but sometimes it does for some vegan shoes.

Belt sizes: If you measure your waist we can supply a belt that has a centre hole about that length from the buckle and an outer hole two or three inches further. This is the belts page

Catalogues: We can make a colour print-out of the web site and send it to anyone who asks.

Cheques in the UK to "J Robertson" including £4.50 postage on orders over £20.
Please write your order on the back of the cheque.
It's often worth ringing on 0800 458 4442 to be sure that something will be in stock.
Cheques in € and US$ to "J Robertson or E. St Clair" are also possible - see "overseas" below. Postage is usually extra, so it's worth beginning an online order to see what the shopping cart tells you mail-order postage will be. It's often worth asking if something is likely to be in stock. If you need a paper invoice before writing a cheque, please begin your order on the shopping cart and print the most relevant page. It's the third or fourth out of four or five, with "invoice from Veganline.com" written at the bottom.

Childrens Shoes are a problem: this is a statement on it.

Labelling is imposed by government to say what country a shoe is made in and what parts of it are leather or textile. From these labels it's possible to guess how green a vegan shoe is and something about the civil and welfare rights of the people who made it.

• Fair trade labelling from Fairtrade Labelling Organisations International members - the blue & green symbol on coffee - does not much exist in a standardised way for shoes. The scheme only applies to certain listed countries that have been judged third-world at some point in the past. UK and US factories are excluded as well as Turkish, while Indian can be included. As the wealth of different countries changes more rapidly than most of us can keep-track of, the list stays the same. The general problem of knowing what suppliers are doing and whether the money trickles-down is made worse in societies without proper votes or human rights like China, so the scheme can't be monitored there even though China is on the list. Even where it's legal to ask questions, a shoe's origins are wrapped in a long supply system which is seldom all in one country or known to one person. Small shops, like individual consumers and even large branded clothing merchants have trouble finding out which of their shoes are good shoes with bad PR and which are not-so-bad shoes with good PR. Just as the classic idea that buying cheapest helps everyone is messy and easy to find-fault with, the idea that trying to buy more goods from countries with a welfare state, or more goods from the better third world employers and fairtrade certified ones is just as messy. Ethletic and Sole Rebels shoes are fair trade certified.
  
  Some importers belong to a trade association - the Ethical Trade Initiative - which compares notes about minimum standards and helps the companies make sure their stories to the press are consistant with each other; the products of these companies aren't singled-out.
  
• Country of origin labels lead to information about the human rights in each country, some of it collated by EthicalTrade.org , an association set-up for large high-street traders that tries to co-ordinate claims made by member firms and maybe improve the effect on producers of mainstream high-street imports. By it's own admission, the organisation can only exert gentle pressure on members by sharing problems and good ideas between them. Veganline.com is a small firm and not a member but some products we sell like Blizzard Boots are made for member companies, and most of the EthicalTrade.org information is free to everyone, as is information from human rights organisations and governments.
  
  Veganline.com buys the maximum proportion of shoes from countries with useful courts, votes, and a welfare state. Others might sensibly think that to buy - indirectly- from the worst places on earth is the default option for improving conditions in bad places; that the Primark buyer is already helping the third world to a certain extent and that it is only the odds-and-ends like organic recycled laces that are newsworthy in this process. This is a neat view. Everyone reading this will have bought apparel from wherever their usual shop gets it, and to pretend not would by hypocritical. To buy from the worst place in earth (or wherever cheapness is combined with productivity: Vietnam, Cambodia, China, Burma rather than southern Sudan) is also a rational view held by well-informed people. Mrs Thatcher stated a decade or two ago that to trade with China might improve human rights there but she has still not been proved right, much, much as conditions have improved in Taiwan.
  
  For those who want to feel good in their clothes, there is another option of preferring goods from Taiwan to China, or whatever the equivalent is: to buy a few products from nice places in the hope of encouraging them more viable than nasty places.
  
  To buy shoes from nice countries and link to league tables on the net are ways of strengthening the economies of nice countries and the importance of league tables on the net. These benefits are matched by more obscure ones. The chances of wealth trickling-down the buying chain, so that the shoe maker is paid more and the advertising department less, is greater if the shoe is made in a country with universal schools & pensions than in China which privatized its hospitals in the 1990s for example or Burma which never had many. Environmental and employment laws are much more detailed in some countries than others, too.
  
  Governments and pressure groups are much less interested in publicising the countries with the most comfortable welfare states than those with the most democracy and legal rights. The CIA World Fact book even slips-in a criticism of Italy's "excessive pensions". And federal countries like India and the USA can have very different welfare in each state from which shoes are stamped "made in USA" or "Made in India" so the idea of a country does fall-down for this purpose. Some vegan shoes shops have used a factory in Wisconsin. Veganline.com used a UK factory which then moved to India - we have no way of knowing which state.
  
  
• AZO In the UK and Europe, the use of 22 suspect AZO dyes have been discouraged by laws banning their use in each member state, following an EU directive. The dyes are most likely still used, for example in cloth and shoe uppers brought-in to the EU, but company buyers have to be aware of the problem and batches of material - including all the microfibre shoe upper - that are made in the EU should be AZO-free, as should cheap shoe-uppers made in Albania for making into shoes in Italy.
  
  
• VOC In the UK and Europe, governments have agreed to outlaw industrial-scale glue users using volatile organic compounds to dissolve their glue as most of us consumers do. Only the trickier process of forming an emulsion of glue in hot water to spray onto the bits is legal. When a shoe is marked "made in UK" or "made in EU" that generally means that the uppers have been stretched round a mould and stuck-on to a sole in that country, so it's fair to say that a shoe made in the EU has produced few volatile organic compounds and this has a direct effect on footwear employees: an old survey of Portuguese shoe factory staff found reduced fertility among people who had to smell volatile organic solvents all day before the EU directive, and that effect is now reduced by buying EU shoes. Surprisingly, it is possible to glue shoes at home - many UK motorcycle boots used to be made by home workers and some Portuguese loafers still are - so the process may be beyond the reach of anyone who can enforce the law, but hopefully home workers are at least aware of the problem and can open a window and turn-on a fan.
  
  
• The Footwear (Indication of Composition) Labelling Regulations 1995 give any UK consumer a chance to see how environmentally friendly a product is: a recent UN report, Livestock's Long Shadow, listed massive environmental benefits of reducing the use of animal products, quite apart from reducing cruelty to animals which is obviously a sane thing to be interested in. There's no need to read the whole thing. The first page or two summerizes the rest as do in the Vegan Society's leaflets Eating the Earth and Give Leather the Boot.
  
  One problem of about ethical and environmental claims made of footwear is that they concentrate too much on the details, like whether something is organic, or made in an interesting employment project in the third world, or improves conditions in China by a small amount while still undercutting factories in the UK or India. From a journalist's point of view it is an attempt to find new news in footwear. Footwear changes slower than tailoring because the tooling costs are higher; a fashion designer can get a sewing machine for free to make samples while a shoe designer can't do much before buying £15,000 stretching machines from Taiwan or £1,000 injection moulds for each size of sole. Exceptions are larger companies which know they can sell a thousand or a hundred thousand and factor-in the tooling and set-up costs without even thinking about it - one of their suppliers' criticisms - but these produce for the sleepy middle market making them boring to read about even for the people who buy middle-market shoes from mainstream shops.
  
  Some shoemakers are extra-ordinarilly thrifty with two of Veganline.com's suppliers still keeping a hundred year-old machines in their factories and some of the moulds or lasts dating from the 1940s, but it's hard to report a green use of tools unless you're writing for Footwear Today in the past, before it closed.
  
  From a reader's point of view, journalists' articals over many years have been absorbed and digested and tend to say that footwear has gone to China now; there is nothing to be done in countries with things like courts votes or a welfare state, only attempts to help outsiders from even poorer countries join the market or manufacturers with a green and organic tinge. This is not a statement of the facts. Some footwear is still produced in the UK, Spain, France and Portugal for example in factories following employment laws and paying taxes towards welfare states. It's just what's in the papers.
  
  If there was a fair way of saying how quickly work should move from comfortable countries to hard-working countries, it would be possible to say that that production fairly transferred from the UK or India to China is not newsworthy in either country until any unusual fact emerges in either country, which is called news. If it is not possible to say how quickly work should transfer: if some governments hike-up or hike-down their exchange rates to suit the elite in the UK or China, as both do, if autocracies compete unfairly with welfare states and the judges of dumping into the EU and US are Peter Mandelson or his US counterpart, then it's hard to know what fair trade is.
  
  Should an enterprising factory that stays open in the UK be reported like a charity? Or if it's working conditions are better than China but worse than the UK, a bad scandal if in the UK or a beacon of hope in China? Reporting of textile workers' conditions suggests that, after being flogged to death, if their bodies are disposed of in an eco-friendly way then that gets a good press if it's in China but if the same shop employs people for less than the basic wage in Manchester than that's a bad thing because it makes a mess on the pavement. Turkish, Indian or Indonesian factories are not reported as good or bad because the two extremes are so hard to report, any position between the two is impossible to report. That's an exaggerated description but one company - Patagonia - with a very good reputation for well made hiking boots, transparency, enthusiasm and such made it into the Observer Ethical Fashion awards for just those reasons, even though their adverts the same year for factory inspectors mentioned almost nothing about employee's conditions, the shoes were made in China and they were made out of leather. Such is Patagonia's transparency that their newly employed factory inspector posted a believable account of his views in video and audio format on U-tube. He stated that the only job he wouldn't want to do among his employer's contractor's staff in China was gluing; that the choice of leathers in the past had been extravagant "because it's like putting one plate through the dishwasher" and of course he mentions nothing about employing staff in an autocracy. He might mention it in private, but even this transparent company with its good reputation for good boots doesn't write "we support autocracies" in its PR and somehow this factory inspector must have known this when he considered what to put on U-tube.
  
  In this impossibility are placed fashion journalists, who by nature are unlikely to be vegetarian or vegan because their job is to report on leather; they are unlikely to be troubled by goods made outside welfare states or democracies because that has been the overwhelming part of their job these last decades and anyway factory closures belong on the business pages. The job of a fashion journalist is to make a paper look more upmarket than any human being really is in order to attract advertisers and advertiser's readers. To report the posh new Hunter Wellington Boot for only £2,999 (Observer Special Offer) rather than the fact that Hunter now imports Chinese wellington boots. Gradually this job is turning-in to the job of reporting whether a boot made in the UK is better than a boot made in China; for the world of fashion journalism and shoes made in reasonable conditions out of reasonable materials to meet.
  
  
• More labels will follow: Veganline.com is increasing the range of symbols and information links next to each shoe so that consumers can decide what to buy. Over time this information might include the more attention-grabbing features like a shoe being made in a staff-owned company, made using recycled parts, using organic hemp canvas or being fit for the compost bin.
  
  
• We have not yet found a neat comparison of welfare systems and access to justice in different countries and Indian states. For example, Albania where most of the safety boots are made is said to have free hospitals, but we haven't linked to an online table to confirm that. Likewise there are Indian states that provide good free hospitals, but labelling regulations just require "India". Those who produce tables tend to be in the USA or Europe, making it hard to quote smaller human rights web sites published closer to the problem. If you know of any kind of league table, please let us know using the form below.
  

Postage in the UK is charged at two rates, for different prices of parcel

£00-20     - 2nd class postage is free. You pay to return.
£20+ £4.50 - most shoes go first class; the heaviest parcel post.
If you get a "sorry you were out" card, try royalmail.com/redelivery
We can also deliver to Collectplus.co.uk shops for £4.50 too.

Overseas Currency conversion is normally by your Visa / Mastercard company who may charge something like 2½% commission for doing this. Nochex and Paypal are likely to give an exact quote in your currency before you order. Free tools exist for estimating other-currency prices, just as a guide. Some pages include an estimated price including postage to Europe in Euro. All purchases end with a confirmation screen linking the total price to xe.com's estimate in any currency. If this is a shock, please cancel before we process the order or send the shoes.

If you prefer not to have a payment card, Paypal can be loaded from a bank account in an increasing number of countries.
Not all UK shops accept Paypal but Veganline.com does as an option on the shopping cart. Once you have a Paypal account, it will tell you the exact amount you are paying in most countries or you can pay any amount you like on the free-form Paypal page in a growing list of currencies.

Overseas last posting dates are here

American & Australian airmail is worked-out on the shopping cart from the price of the order:

£00-05 £02 for most wallets 
£05-20 £10 for most slippers & belts
£20+   £13 for most shoes 
Quotation by weight over 2kg (4.4 lbs)
Free outbound surface mail for replacements (you pay postage to us)
Small charge for airmail replacements - about $10

Cheapest US return is usually first class small packet from USPS

American & Australian surface mail is cheaper & greener but slower. It can be chosen as an option on the cart

• North America - up to 6 weeks
• South America, Africa & Asia - up to 8 weeks
• Australasia - up to 12 weeks
• Eastern Europe - please ask

European mail is worked out on the shopping from the price of the order Air and surface mail are the same price

£00-15 £02 for most wallets, belts and the cheapest slippers
£15-99 £08 for most shoes boots and slippers
Quotation by weight over 2kg

Privacy: your data is not shared with others, such as mailing list companies, nor used for excessive follow-up promotions by us. We do give email addresses to couriers.

It's possible to opt-in to quarterly emails with a specific option on the order form. These don't exist at present but if set-up they would have an opt-out on each email sent. Sometimes lists are set-up of people who want to be told when a batch of shoes come-in. These are only used once. Some people use changedetection.com to monitor additions to the sale pages. Each change detection email has an opt-out link.

Returns & exchanges are fine on unworn shoes that don't fit. There is no deadline. We do not pay for you to return shoes to us. We pay outbound postage for replacements in the UK, and most of the cost of airmail to the USA & Australia.

Shoe Sizes / Sale Shoes: there is a size chart at the foot of each page, like this. Click on a UK size for sale shoes in that size. There is also a full-page about sizes. Where shoes are sold in several sizes there is a drop-down menu to choose the size, using the scale that the shoe was made in, either continental or UK.

Security & Privacy for card details on the secure ordering server can be checked by your browser as well as having certificates like this Click on the form itself and then check your browser's help file for instructions, or right-click & experiment. The ordering system is run by an e-commerce company with its own regular security checks, including the system for getting data from their web page to Veganline.com. We have also checked the servers used for email, text and pictures against likely hacking. The test includes standard questions about the office management as well as the web site. You may also use Nochex or Paypal if you prefer to keep your card number private: they are among the payment options on the shopping cart, which will fill-in the order, amount and the payee for you. Generally, online orders are easiest to track and less accident-prone than orders by phone and post.

Stockists: The office address is 2 Avenue Gds, London SW14 8BP, 020 8286 9947, Fax 0870 1600 848. Secret Society of Vegans now have a shop in North London and are experimenting with a few Bouncing Shoes and Boots; for the moment there isn't enough stock for them to have the full size range so please check their secret society of vegans web site and email or phone before making a special trip.
Please do not visit as the stock is not on this site. Our mark-ups are usually too low to encourage wholesale, but we may be able to sort drop-shipping for other web sites, or perhaps up to a third off for repeat non-retail customers. Occasionally a boutique gets in touch and buys some cartons of vegan shoes, and we hope to be geared to efficient wholesale in a year or so. Please get in touch if you would like to be told about offers as they become available.

There are plenty of other questions, less directly related to shoes, which are now answered on the pages

/more.htm about why there isn't a shoe industry in the UK, why the shoes aren't more trendy, why we don't sell childrens shoes and more.

/why.htm why vegan

What's wrong with leather, Why me?
What's veganline.com? Who? Why small?