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Nurman Farieka Ramdhany, a 25-year-old
entrepreneur in the Indonesian city of Bandung, thinks he has
come up with a cost-effective answer that promotes
sustainability: skin taken from the feet of chickens.
A rubbery delicacy in many cuisines, including dim sum, chicken
feet are covered with skin that has a similar texture and
pattern to snake or crocodile skin.
Ramdhany's father had researched these more exotic skins and
recommended he try making shoes with chicken feet, which he
started doing in 2017.
Now, Ramdhany and a team of five, including his father, produce
shoes entirely or partially made from chicken feet in a
labor-intensive operation that takes 10 days. They skin the feet
by hand, dye the skins and sew them into pieces that can be
fashioned into shoes.
It takes 45 chicken feet to make a pair of shoes, which are
priced between $35 and $140.
Ramdhany said he is mainly motivated by the opportunity to use a
waste product from fast food restaurants and markets, his main
suppliers.
"The waste is a lot, that is why we try to process it to get
more value from it," he said.
Food waste is forecast to rise by almost a third to more than 2
billion tonnes by 2030, the Boston Consulting Group forecast in
2018.
Ramdhany says customers like his shoes. "They say our products
are comfortable to wear. So far the market response has been
positive."
(Writing by Stanley Widianto; Editing by Karishma Singh and
Giles Elgood)
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