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cimoreneWho wants to hear an uplifting story about shoes? What about a wearying yet comical saga of trials, frustrations, and ultimate triumph... and sneakers?
These shoes are the Superga 2750 COTU Shade.
1. rose/turquoise 2. blue/light violet
3. ribes/pink 4. I wasn't able to find this one in stock so IDK the name, but isn't it lovely?
5. lavender/acid green 6. ribes/sunflower
7. Also out of stock apparently 8. dkbord/dahlia
I encountered my first image of #1 last week on ModCloth, who are my enemies*, but I fell for it right away and would have considered ordering it anyway and being stuck in International Shipping and Journeying 1½hrs Round Trip to The Tollhouse To Pay The Import Duty Hell, except that it isn't even in stock there, it's just listed as "Coming Soon!"
So I tried to find it elsewhere by Googling things like "Superga pink blue dye" and quickly enough learned the style name. However, when I first checked the only stockist I could find was out of every colorway except #8, which is too dark for me. I was extremely sad, but I turned my attention to looking for other shoes.
A few days later, though, I was still thinking about it. I tried again and followed a link to Zappos, just to see what the shipping policy was like there. For years they wouldn't ship outside the continental US, but they do now! However, Import Duty Hell still loomed. I shelved the problem and turned my attention to shopping for dress shoes and summer slip-ons instead, but when I related the sorry story to my mom tonight I found myself dwelling on my disappointment again. "I'm so butthurt about those shoes," I said to Wax. Wax is an excellent wife who frequently assertively tells me that I should do what I already secretly wanted to do anyway, so she said I should have them shipped to my parents if I wanted them that much.
I went to the website to do so, only to find that they were sold out in my size! In fact, they were only out of #1, rose/turquoise and #2, blue/light violet, but they had a very unflattering photo of #5 up as the last option and I wasn't sure I liked it enough for $80 USD. I tried Googling again with 'EU' in the search terms, then went to Google Images and skimmed the alt tags of the big product images for addresses that looked like they might be webstores.
And I found one! A store in Italy that stocked 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6! I spent a confusing while confirming that they DO ship to Finland before creating an account (why do you ALWAYS have to create an account in a whole separate rigamarole? Why can't you just do all of that integrated with the ordering process? #shittywebstoredesign) only to find a Country: field on the address form that only had Italy in the drop-down options, and wouldn't let me enter anything else. So I went back to Google, found a second Italian webstore with the same colors in stock and even more adorable interface courtesy of Microsoft Translator (I'm still not sure what part of the shopping cart is supposed to be 'basketball'), and then spent a solid 20 minutes agonizing about which color I wanted. I almost got #5 after all (ironically?), but finally pretty much picked #1 via eenie-meenie-miney-mo.
* because they rename all the products in their entire store and only intermittently list the real manufacturer and never the real product name, which means you can't look for them from other sources if you can't figure it out. That is bad enough right now when you have to pay huge tolls if you order things shipped internationally, to say nothing of your carbon footprint, but it was completely torturous back before they had international shipping.
These shoes are the Superga 2750 COTU Shade.
1. rose/turquoise 2. blue/light violet
3. ribes/pink 4. I wasn't able to find this one in stock so IDK the name, but isn't it lovely?
5. lavender/acid green 6. ribes/sunflower
7. Also out of stock apparently 8. dkbord/dahlia
I encountered my first image of #1 last week on ModCloth, who are my enemies*, but I fell for it right away and would have considered ordering it anyway and being stuck in International Shipping and Journeying 1½hrs Round Trip to The Tollhouse To Pay The Import Duty Hell, except that it isn't even in stock there, it's just listed as "Coming Soon!"
So I tried to find it elsewhere by Googling things like "Superga pink blue dye" and quickly enough learned the style name. However, when I first checked the only stockist I could find was out of every colorway except #8, which is too dark for me. I was extremely sad, but I turned my attention to looking for other shoes.
A few days later, though, I was still thinking about it. I tried again and followed a link to Zappos, just to see what the shipping policy was like there. For years they wouldn't ship outside the continental US, but they do now! However, Import Duty Hell still loomed. I shelved the problem and turned my attention to shopping for dress shoes and summer slip-ons instead, but when I related the sorry story to my mom tonight I found myself dwelling on my disappointment again. "I'm so butthurt about those shoes," I said to Wax. Wax is an excellent wife who frequently assertively tells me that I should do what I already secretly wanted to do anyway, so she said I should have them shipped to my parents if I wanted them that much.
I went to the website to do so, only to find that they were sold out in my size! In fact, they were only out of #1, rose/turquoise and #2, blue/light violet, but they had a very unflattering photo of #5 up as the last option and I wasn't sure I liked it enough for $80 USD. I tried Googling again with 'EU' in the search terms, then went to Google Images and skimmed the alt tags of the big product images for addresses that looked like they might be webstores.
And I found one! A store in Italy that stocked 1, 2, 3, 5, & 6! I spent a confusing while confirming that they DO ship to Finland before creating an account (why do you ALWAYS have to create an account in a whole separate rigamarole? Why can't you just do all of that integrated with the ordering process? #shittywebstoredesign) only to find a Country: field on the address form that only had Italy in the drop-down options, and wouldn't let me enter anything else. So I went back to Google, found a second Italian webstore with the same colors in stock and even more adorable interface courtesy of Microsoft Translator (I'm still not sure what part of the shopping cart is supposed to be 'basketball'), and then spent a solid 20 minutes agonizing about which color I wanted. I almost got #5 after all (ironically?), but finally pretty much picked #1 via eenie-meenie-miney-mo.
* because they rename all the products in their entire store and only intermittently list the real manufacturer and never the real product name, which means you can't look for them from other sources if you can't figure it out. That is bad enough right now when you have to pay huge tolls if you order things shipped internationally, to say nothing of your carbon footprint, but it was completely torturous back before they had international shipping.
(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 09:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 12:57 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 06:59 pm (UTC)When you mail stuff you have to write something on the customs form and if you write a value that adds up to more than the limit which... I THINK is now around 32€ according to Wax, then they will hold the package in Customs and we'll have to do the whole thing. But it's not a big deal, really, to just write non specifics like "tshirt - value $2" and "cds - value $5" and "food - value $10" on it. It doesn't have to be either precise or accurate as long as it's sort of plausible.
I don't think they really check unless they suspect drugs or large-scale fraud, or something. (My parents sent me Pepto-Bismol one time because they didn't know you can't import medicine willy-nilly and then since medication isn't allowed we got on a watch list and they confiscated and inspected like the next 6 things they sent me. But since they turned out to be innocent, we never had to pay for them or anything - just make the horrible journey.)
(no subject)
Date: 25 Mar 2013 08:05 pm (UTC)(Last week, I think, I finally found a US distributor for the cool sneakers you posted and I asked you about...I was afraid I wouldn't find them here, since I guess they're made in Sweden, but fortunately there is one online site based here.)
What we won't do for shoes.
(no subject)
Date: 26 Mar 2013 05:38 am (UTC)Yeah, I'm not sure if the exorbitant cost or the carbon footprint makes me feel worse about international shoe-shipping, but I've been driven to distraction by the cross-continental footwear hunt a bunch of times. It's WAY cheaper for things that weigh less...I make regular purchases from Threadless and Better World Books.