IT engineer quits thousand dollar job to become a shoe shiner

On an October afternoon, in about an hour, the shop in Dong Da district (Hanoi) of Dinh Thanh Phong, 38 years old, received 5 customers coming to shine shoes and maintain branded bags. "After nearly four years, I realized that my decision to quit my IT job to shine shoes was the right one," he said.

Since childhood, Phong has had a special passion for shoes. Mrs. Nguyen Thuan (his mother) said that when her son was 5 years old, his mother bought him his first pair of shoes. He cherished them like a treasure, only wearing them on the bed. "He definitely did not wear them on the floor because he would save them for Tet," she said.

When he was a student, his mother gave him 1.5 million VND to buy clothes for the whole school year, Phong spent 1.2 million VND to buy a pair of shoes. Later, when he started working in IT, he always appeared everywhere wearing trousers, shirts and leather shoes.

Not feeling secure entrusting his precious shoes to street shoemakers, Phong ordered shoe polish, soap, and brushes from abroad and learned how to take care of them himself.

At that time, Phong considered leather shoes as a hobby and IT was his job to support himself. But the high-paying job did not make him happy.

"My job is so stressful that at 25 my hair is already white," he said. The young man planned to change careers when he had the chance. The first step was to move to an IT company in Singapore so he could have Saturdays and Sundays off.

Having a lot of free time, Phong often goes to coffee shops. The shop owner knows he loves leather shoes so he suggested starting a business. "He advised me to sell shoes, but I thought about maintenance because this job is rare for professionals," he said.

In 2017, on weekends, Phong brought his shoes to a coffee shop to shine. When someone came to ask curiously, he offered, "Give me your shoes so I can take care of them." Since then, during the working day, Phong shined shoes at night and brought them back to the shop the next day, without taking any payment.

People told each other, and strangers started to come. The Hanoi boy started to seriously think about shoe shining as a money-making job, so he went to foreign websites to do thorough research.

He regularly records videos and takes photos of the products he maintains and posts them on social media. The number of online customers who actively seek him out is enough to give him the confidence to open a store at home in Long Bien while still maintaining his IT job. Phong also cooperates with a famous branded store in Hanoi, providing product maintenance for their customers.

In 2019, he decided to quit his job and devote himself full-time to shoe shining. At that time, the trend of "wearing a shoe shine suit" was booming in Hanoi.

To find his own market, Phong targeted a potential customer group: brand-name consumers. He closed his store and offered to be a backyard for brand-name stores, receiving a monthly salary to learn more.

From a chief engineer who had Saturday and Sunday off every week, Phong now works without days off. ''I feel frustrated so I go on a trip once a month,'' he said.

Taking care of products worth tens, even hundreds of millions of dong made him stressed. There was a time when he cut the leather strap of a Gucci bag to the wrong size, or damaged a customer's Chanel handbag and had to pay compensation. "I was so nervous that I couldn't sleep. If I did sleep, I still dreamed about my mistake at night," Phong recalled.

However, he accepted the trade-off because "everything requires tuition". Phong still remembers one time when he received a request from a VIP customer to paint the edge of a Louis Vuitton bag. Because he did not fully understand the bag's structure, he had to sand and paint for a whole month. Later, when he became proficient, it only took Phong one or two days.

Three years of training in luxury spas helped him gain experience in repairing and maintaining shoes and leather bags, and learn how to run a store, understand the tastes of luxury lovers, and how to market to attract customers.

From April to September 2020, Dinh Thanh Phong worked for a handmade leather goods store because he wanted to learn more about this material.

Nearly four years of studying and working gave Phong the confidence to start his own business. At that time, Covid-19 broke out, the store opened, the owner and staff sat all day without any customers. "With no one out on the street, where would we find people who need shoes shined?", he said.

The pressure of making a living reminded Phong not to sit still. When social distancing guidelines were relaxed, he and his staff went to a friend's coffee shop in a luxury apartment complex to shine shoes.

Hoang The Manh, 34 years old, Mr. Phong's employee, said: "I still felt a bit embarrassed but he was very calm and persistent."

Phong's shoe shine price of 100,000 VND per pair is 10 times more expensive than street shiners, making customers even rarer. But every weekend Phong and his staff come, meticulously "transform" old shoes into new ones, and customers start to come. "Gradually, many people even drive their cars home to bring their shoes to me for maintenance," he said.

During the week, he takes online orders. Some customers call him to come to their homes to fix their shoes. When they arrive, they travel nearly 20 km, only to find that the shoes are too damaged to be repaired. They let him go home without a word of thanks or compensation for travel expenses. Some customers call Phong to come to their homes after finishing work at midnight to pick up their shoes for repair. On winter nights, while lying in a warm blanket, he still gets up to pick up the order.

Seeing her son quit his high-paying, stable job to pursue a job that not many people do, Mrs. Thuan felt both pity and worry. "But I understand that every success comes with a price, so I always support him," she said.

Covid passed, customer demand gradually returned, even as a boost for Phong's career. In 2022, the social network Tiktok developed, Mr. Phong actively made videos advertising the service, instructing how to clean shoes properly, attracting a large number of customers. During Tet 2023, his revenue exploded, he could not keep up with the work.

Currently, he opened two stores, creating jobs for more than 10 employees, with a monthly revenue of about 400 million VND.

Looking back on the journey, Dinh Thanh Phong believes that passion is an important factor, helping each person find ideas and have motivation in the first two or three years of starting a business. However, to go a long way, one needs patience and to accumulate enough skills through practical experience.

Mrs. Thuan never said it out loud, but deep down she was happy that her son dared to give up stability to pursue his passion. ''My husband and I followed the old way of studying hard, finding a stable job, never daring to step out of our comfort zone, but he did it,'' Mrs. Thuan said.

Now, there are still occasional customers at the Covid-19 coffee shop who proactively come to Ms. Thuan's son's shop to have their branded goods maintained. But instead of "shoe shiner", they call Phong "artist".