For this episode I met John Chung, who runs the shoe shine bar, shoe and leather goods repair shop and shoe store Mason & Smith in Singapore. He won the world championships of shoe shining in 2018, and has for many years been an ambassadeur for professional shoe shining in particular and caring for your shoes in general. Mason & Smith has not least been pioneers with shoe shine videos on Instagram and TikTok, reaching a very wide audience globally.

I talk with John about how he decided to skip university to instead refurb and sell thrift store shoes to eventually build up his shoe shine business, about why Asians dominate the professional shoe shining scene, about what professional shoe shiners do differently to regular people caring for their shoes, and more.