ANTI-VIRUS SHOES. An exit to the crisis
The AXA Magnolia shoe factory, owned by Grigori Lup, is located in the city of Cluj-Napoca, in western Romania, which, in the face of the crisis unleashed by the Covid-19 pandemic, saw its clientele decrease, had to dismiss its 10 employees and it almost closed.
However, luck and his sense of opportunity and the ability to reinvent himself, earned him to create the first anti-virus shoes that allow maintaining a distance of one and a half meters between people who wear the same type of footwear.
The shoes and boots made of leathers have an extension in the toe that reach the shoe size number 75. The back is similar to any normal shoe, while the inside of the toe is made of a very light material filling that fits with your toes.
"If two people who were wearing my shoes were placed opposite each other there would be a separation of one and a half meters between them", explained Lup, who sells each pair of "social distancing shoes" for one hundred euros.
"Seeing that many people did not respect social distance in this time of isolation, facing the loss of my work, I thought of making three pairs of these shoes to put on the internet and attract attention", said Grigori Lup, who acknowledges that at first "it all started as a joke".
Now orders for the new anti-virus shoes are increasing, not only from his country, but also from abroad, "the news was widely disseminated by the Romanian press and then abroad, generating more interest in our new products", said Lup.
Despite the originality of proposal, the shoe experts maintain their questions regarding its comfort in everyday use.
