Tamir Shakirov and Liliya Zhirnova
Ask someone who remembers the first years of independence what was difficult to find in the shops, and footwear is likely to be among the answers.
There was a time when a pair of good shoes was something to be found rather than something to be selected.
And sneakers—the ubiquitous footwear of today’s world—were hardly a feature of everyday shopping in the way they are now.
Look at the market today and the contrast is striking.
Sneakers are everywhere: for running, walking, sport, leisure and simply fashion. There are imported products from multiple manufacturing centres, alongside an increasingly visible range of domestic footwear.
The change tells us something about Turkmenistan that statistics about shoe production alone cannot tell us.
It tells us that people have choices.
The modern footwear market is also more complicated than the simple arrival of imported shoes. Domestic production has developed alongside imports.
Turkmenistan’s leather and footwear industry now includes enterprises using locally produced leather and modern equipment. A 2025 government report highlighted the Gökdepe Leather Factory’s TG Aýakgap brand, whose range includes men’s classic shoes, moccasins and modern sneakers, as well as women’s and children’s moccasins. Some products are handmade from the factory’s own natural leather.
Other domestic brands have emerged as well. Röwşen produces leather footwear for adults and children using leather supplied by the Maksat-deri enterprise in Mary. The company Muhammet-Balkan, known as MB Shoes, has been producing men’s, women’s and children’s footwear from locally produced natural leather since 2019.
The development has been visible at major industry exhibitions. At Turkmentextile Expo 2025, domestic companies displayed genuine-leather footwear and a growing range of leather accessories, while the Gökdepe tannery presented new leather products.
This is an important part of the story.
Thirty-five years ago, the issue was often availability.
Today, the question is increasingly which one do I want?
That is a very different consumer relationship with a product.
A person looking for footwear today can think about colour, material, style, purpose, brand, comfort and price. A young person can choose sports shoes because they are fashionable, another because they are useful for exercise, and another simply because they like the way they look.
At the same time, a consumer looking for genuine leather no longer necessarily has to depend entirely on imported products.
The emergence of local leather footwear is particularly interesting because it represents more than shoe assembly. It connects several stages of production: livestock and hides, tanning, leather processing, design, manufacturing, retail and, increasingly, branding.
That is a much deeper transformation.
There is also an export dimension. Turkmenistan’s own reporting says domestic leather and footwear brands are seeking foreign markets and have begun exporting.
The important point is not that every pair of shoes sold in Turkmenistan is now locally made. It clearly isn’t. Nor should the development of domestic brands be exaggerated.
The point is more modest—and perhaps more significant.
Thirty-five years of independence have produced a footwear market in which domestic manufacturers can compete for the attention of consumers who themselves have far more choices than previous generations.
And sneakers make an excellent symbol of that change.
They are perhaps the least formal item of clothing imaginable. Yet their appearance in abundance reflects a much larger transformation: international fashions have become part of ordinary life, sport has become more visible, private retail has expanded, domestic manufacturing has developed, and consumers have acquired the habit of choosing rather than simply accepting what happens to be available.
A pair of shoes does not normally make history.
But sometimes history can be seen by looking down at one’s feet. /// nCa, 3 September 2026