Seemingly gifted with a previously unacknowledged creative streak, Don Cassiano started making basic tistis tsinelas of his own variety and design, and sold them to his neighbors and friends. Soon, word of his unique footwear spread beyond the borders of their town, and people from neighboring towns came to buy from him. Eventually, his tsinelas reached stalls in Quiapo, and, at the height of Don Cassiano’s booming business, were even being supplied in retail stores in major cities in the Philippines. Then, Don Cassiano had turned his home into a workshop, with somewhere between 100 to 120 workers on his payroll making tsinelas day in and day out.

However, it was two decades later, after Don Cassiano—who became known as Father of Tistis Slippers—had his successful run in the business, that the rest of the town of Liliw, Laguna, caught up with the tsinelas industry. Some of the first stores, many of which still exist today and remain the most visited, are Progressive Footwear, Badong Footwear, and Step Right, among others, which took off in the ‘50s and ‘60s.

"Most of the people who own the stores started out as footwear workers themselves," says Caryl Hombrebueno of Progressive Footwear. "Progressive Footwear started in 1963 by my aunt and uncle, Erning and Nene Consibido, who decided to put up their own store after working in footwear for awhile. They made the first few pairs themselves, and now we have a whole workshop of workers making footwear in our own house." Caryl explains that there are no real factories in Liliw, since every store makes the footwear out of workshops in their own homes. The industry has also already progressed far beyond the original tistis tsinelas, and features trendy, up-to-date styles that are well-researched and carefully designed to match up with popular brands in the market.

"We go on the internet and we look at magazines to keep up with the styles," says Caryl. "We usually release new styles every two weeks, since we know how fast trends progress and how quick the demands are." You won’t see any of the original tistis material anymore, since it is now mostly inside the slippers, sandals and shoes, serving as the sturdy spine. Designs with local flavor like the sawali and abaca sandals and slippers are especially popular for the summer, although all the stores in Liliw also supply styles for the rest of the year, from the simple leather sandals to gorgeous lace-up wedges to denim stilettos to velvet ballerina flats to fully-beaded hand-embroidered slip-ons to intricate wood-carved sandal heels. "We’re not high tech yet," Caryl says. "We do most of the work by hand, which sometimes gives our shoes a better quality and feel to them."

As with many other Philippine products, Liliw’s footwear is heavily exported, which certainly helps the fact that 40 to 50 percent of the town earns from the industry. Aside from being well-designed and fashion-forward, the shoes are known for their sturdiness. "Designs and trends are universal," explains Excie Magcase, President of Liliw’s Tourism Council and part of NCCA’s Committee on Dramatic Arts. "Which means sometimes you have similar shoes in different stores. Therefore the competition among stores is not just in the design, but in the structure of the footwear. Each footwear factory has its own secret formula for assembling shoes, and that is where the serious competition lies." The claim of Liliw’s footwear industry is that you can set them side by side with highly fashionable China-, Taiwan- or Korea-made shoes, and they’d be head-on as far as style is concerned. But give them equal wear and tear and daily beating, and Liliw’s footwear will always last far, far longer.

Incidentally, the growth of Liliw’s industry has resulted in a huge boost in tourism, and, consequently, resulted in the creation of the Annual Liliw Tsinelas Festival five years ago. "I have to say that Liliw’s footwear industry is one that really got boosted ever since the festival was held yearly," says Excie, who planned and directed the week-long festival for the year. "Since the festival started five years ago, the production of footwear jumped up more than 50 percent."

This year, the 5th Liliw Tsinelas Festival, held on the last week of April, featured a special documentary-type fashion show, directed by Excie, which began with a portrayal of the history of the tsinelas industry and then ended with the current trends and top designs produced by the local stores. Street parties and beauty pageants also filled up different days of the festival, and a special tiangge set-up featuring imported items or items from other towns filled the streets every day of the week. Other special events created for the festival included the innovative Likamay for children seven to 16 years old, which is a project for developing products from the excess materials used in making footwear. It has already proved to be such a successful program that there are plans of integrating it into their local school curriculum.