Battle of the pointes: Grishko and the threat of plastic

Nikolay Grishko runs the com­pany he foun­ded by in the late 1980s after accom­pa­ny­ing his pro­fes­sional dancer-wife Tamara dur­ing a French tour: Rus­sian dan­cers were bring­ing bal­let shoes from theatre work­shops at home to sell to European dancers.

Grishko resolved to exploit this mar­ket by organ­ising the Rus­sian work­shops to make bal­let shoes for export, and in doing so gave employ­ment to many crafts­men dur­ing the dif­fi­cult eco­nomic trans­ition of the 1990s. But what finally con­vinced Grishko to start his own busi­ness was when a Soviet trade organ­iz­a­tion respons­ible for sales to the United States approached him with a request to find pointe shoes for an Amer­ican dan­cer. The request sent him search­ing. But find­ing the shoes was not easy. By 1988, the theatre work­shops had already begun to fall apart and could hardly sup­ply them­selves, let alone external consumers.

More than 20 years later, he rep­res­ents one of the very few suc­cess stor­ies, after vodka and caviar, for Russian-made high-quality con­sumer products with a global reputation.

The com­pany he foun­ded that bears his name, has exports so large they are chal­len­ging inter­na­tional com­pet­it­ors that boast dec­ades of exper­i­ence in the industry. The global asso­ci­ation of Rus­sia with great bal­let — as exem­pli­fied by the excite­ment over last Friday’s reopen­ing of the Bolshoi Theatre — is also an asset for mar­ket­ing Russian-made bal­let shoes.

Shoe­maker Capezio, based in the United States and cre­ated by an Italian mas­ter, had cel­eb­rated its 100th anniversary when Grishko was just filling out regis­tra­tion papers for his com­pany. Now the ven­er­able firm is feel­ing the pres­sure on its own turf from the Rus­sian enterprise.

Have you ever seen a Rus­sian com­pany that pushed an Italian one out of the mar­ket for shoes?”

says Grishko rhetorically.

Grishko exports shoes to more than 60 coun­tries. The United States is its first and largest cli­ent with sales of up to 100,000 pointe shoes per year. Over 300 U.S. stores carry Grishko products, which include other dance foot­wear and act­ive cloth­ing in addi­tion to the bal­let shoes. Grishko factor­ies make 40,000 pointe shoes per month, but even that is not enough to sat­isfy demand.

Con­vin­cing the mar­ket that these new Rus­sian shoes were worth hav­ing wasn’t as easy as one might think. Grishko described the shoes that were made in the theatre work­shops dur­ing Soviet times as ugly and uncom­fort­able. Nobody in the West wanted them because they didn’t meet their stand­ards, Grishko said. West­ern baller­inas had to learn tra­di­tional as well as con­tem­por­ary dance, but in the Soviet Union con­tem­por­ary dance was prac­tic­ally non-existent, as were the skills to make pointe shoes for it.

So chan­ging the design and tech­no­logy used in the man­u­fac­ture won over new cli­ents. Grishko proudly stamped “Made in Rus­sia” labels on the soles of his shoes, and found another obstacle.

Rus­si­ans are looked upon with dis­gust on the world mar­ket. When cus­tom­ers see the label ‘Made in Rus­sia’ it cre­ates dis­trust. We con­stantly have to fight this. We are break­ing the ste­reo­type about Rus­sian pro­du­cers and Rus­sian dis­trib­ut­ors. We can show that the Rus­sian pro­du­cer always keeps his word and hon­ours the con­di­tions of the contract.”

Brand recog­ni­tion abroad was another hurdle. Baller­inas typ­ic­ally use one brand of pointe shoe through­out their careers. Con­vin­cing them to switch to Rus­sian brands took more than 10 years.

If someone is in Grishko, she will be in Grishko all her life. The brand might change, but very slowly because it’s like your second feet.”

said Sophie Simpson, pointe shoe fit­ter with Freed of Lon­don. Freed, for instance, is still the most pop­u­lar brand for Brit­ish dan­cers and is the offi­cial shoe­maker for many Brit­ish dance com­pan­ies. But things are chan­ging now that West­ern dan­cers are more famil­iar with Rus­sian labels.

Roman Kukushkin, dir­ector of Rus­sian Class (dis­trib­uted un Rus­sian Pointe in the US), Grishko’s strongest Rus­sian com­pet­itor, got his first taste of bal­let when he was 4 years old, back stage at the Bolshoi Theatre. His mother was work­ing in a theatre work­shop and he later joined the staff him­self as a shoe­maker. Whenever he got a free moment from work, Kukushkin went to the rehears­als to watch the baller­inas dance.

“I loved to just be in classes. There would be a small recorder play­ing or someone accom­pa­ny­ing. They would be all sweaty in their torn, dirty shirts, tattered shoes.

They are doing some move and you start to under­stand how much strength that takes,” Kukushkin said.

Kukushkin still man­ages Rus­sian Class, which he estab­lished in 1991, in line with the tech­niques he learned while work­ing at the Bolshoi Theater. Keep­ing with tra­di­tion, Rus­sian Class and Grishko main­tain a staff of expert shoe­makers who hand­craft the pointe shoes. Most of their com­pet­it­ors, how­ever, have out­sourced pro­duc­tion to Asian coun­tries where the shoes are put together by machines. Hand-crafting pre­serves the psy­cho­lo­gical con­nec­tion between the dan­cer and her shoe­maker. Each Grishko shoe is marked with the shoemaker’s num­ber, which can become a lucky charm for the ballerina.

Baller­inas feel the hands of dif­fer­ent mas­ters. It’s fantastic.”

But a threat is loom­ing, and one which most tra­di­tional man­u­fac­tures don’t want to com­bat by imit­a­tion: plastic-lined pointe shoes. The Amer­ican Gaynor Minden pointe shoes, for example, are made with plastic.

Grishko and Kukushkin warn that these shoes are harm­ful to the dan­cers’ feet. caus­ing infec­tions and cracks in the bones of the foot. Kukushkin says,

Foot­wear must live. It must breathe. If only so that the foot of the dan­cer stays healthy.”

Gaynor Minden has another point of view,

Gaynor Minden uses high qual­ity elast­o­mer­ics for its unbreak­able shanks and boxes, not the anti­quated paste and card­board con­struc­tion that makes other pointe shoes quickly deteri­or­ate while tor­ment­ing the feet. The flex­ib­il­ity and sup­port that you feel in the new shoe will remain the same through­out its long life. Gaynor Mindens have tre­mend­ous dur­ab­il­ity without being hard or clunky. The shoes last 3 to 6 times as long as most other brands.

Cer­tainly the tempta­tion to change to longer last­ing shoes is a great one. And their blurb isn’t just showy pub­li­city; many dan­cers agree with them. Alina Cojocaru, Ver­onika Part, Gil­lian Murphy and many oth­ers are all fans.

The com­pan­ies are not averse to all new tech­no­lo­gies how­ever. Grishko even uses nan­o­tech­no­logy to make its pointe shoes. The insides of shoe model Mir­acle are treated with micro­scopic bits of sil­ver, which help to kill microbes. Grishko also works with Moscow-based Andreyev Acous­tics Insti­tute, which pre­vi­ously worked to reduce noise emis­sions from Soviet sub­mar­ines and is now help­ing to cre­ate pointe shoes that hit the floor quietly.

adap­ted from The Moscow Times and Pass­port Magazine 

From the top: Grishko, Rus­sian Class, Gaynor Minden

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