Katrin Figge

Riska Mirzalina Puts Best Foot Forward in 'Recycled' Shoes

Riska Mirzalina likes to chat. The bright, cheerful 21-year-old student with black chin-length hair, dressed casually in a pair of jeans and a black shirt during an interview in South Jakarta last week. She is always quick with a smile, and gets especially excited when she talks about her passion — environmental issues.

Riska has also been active about doing her bit to address these issues. About one year ago, she founded Klassamirza, a business that uses mostly recycled materials to create ladies’ footwear.

Her concern for the environment stemmed from a year she spent in the United States on an exchange program during her second year of high school. Her host father in the United States, a geologist, had a strong interest in these issues and helped educate her about the environment. “My host dad influenced me a lot,” Riska said.

She is currently majoring in business at Prasetiya Mulya Business School in Jakarta, and said her studies helped when she decided to start her own business.

Riska’s particular focus on shoes began after she designed a pair for herself.

“I have very big feet,” she said. “It is hard for me to find nice shoes when I go to department stores.”

After she made the first pair of shoes on her own, her friends, who liked the design, encouraged her to continue.

From there her uncle introduced her to some home industries that produce shoes in Bogor, where Riska lives with her family. This inspired her to create more of her own designs.

“I talked to the shoemakers in the home industries in Bogor,” she said.

“Their economic situation is not really improving, despite the high-end brand shoes they are producing. The gap between the price of the final product and what those people get is really big.”

Riska then came up with the idea that she would base Klassamirza on. Instead of importing material from South Korea and India, she found a solution that kept costs down and was environmentally friendly.

“Bogor is well-known for its factory outlets, like Bandung,” she said. “These industries produce thousands and thousands of meters of fabric every day. But since the economic downturn in 2008, a lot of demand from abroad stopped coming in, and some of the industries had to close down, leaving behind lots of material. I started to buy some of this unused material.”

By avoiding shipping costs and taxes, Riska was able to increase wages for the shoemakers and still keep the price for a pair of shoes affordable. She currently has three shoemakers working for her.

Klassamirza shoes can be ordered via the company’s Web site. On the site, Riska includes details about the material used for each pair of shoes and explains how she developed the design.

A pair of flat yellow shoes, for example, was inspired by the sunshine she saw in Seattle. Another pair decorated with red lips came about because Riska’s friends had made fun of her for having “fat lips.”

“The shoes are made out of 20 to 70 percent recycled fabric,” she said.

“We select used materials, clean, re-pattern and further process them and turn them into ready-to-use shoes.”

In March last year, Riska applied for the Bayer Young Environmental Envoy program. Bayer is a chemical and pharmaceutical company from Germany, and the Young Environmental Envoy program encourages young people to submit inspiring ideas and innovations to protect the environment.

Along with three other Indonesian participants, Riska was selected from 1,300 applicants worldwide to attend a weeklong conference in Leverkusen, Germany, in November last year.

“Most of the projects of the other finalists were related to chemistry or high-technology, things I don’t have any idea about,” she said. “So when I told them my project was designing shoes, they [the other finalists] all were a little bit surprised.”

Besides attending seminars and lectures in Germany, Riska received assistance from the program to put on a fashion show of her shoes.

This helped her to introduce Klassamirza to a wider audience. As a result, her project has been featured in foreign media from Turkey to Finland, and more and more orders from abroad have been coming in through her Web site.

Riska said she was eager to introduce Indonesians to the environmental issues that she cares so much about.

“Most people in developed countries have a high education and live in relatively stable economic conditions,” she said. “But in less developed countries like Indonesia, many people still live below the poverty line and probably don’t even think about eco-stuff, organic foods, etc.”

Looking ahead, Riska said she would continue to develop Klassamirza, as the business is still growing, but in the long run she dreams of working for the United Nations.

And with her determination, it seems that this dream might very well become reality.

To order shoes or for more information, visit klassamirza.multiply.com

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