Marikina is not the shoe capital of the Philippines for nothing. For the greater part of the 20th century, Marikina was the biggest manufacturer of quality shoes. There was a time, between 1978 and 1982, when Marikina’s women’s shoes and handbags made of snakeskin were the rave on Fifth Avenue, New York City. As early as 1935, Marikina already had 139 shops producing 260,078 pairs of ladies shoes and 86,692 pairs of men shoes worth P762,896.00. And as may as 2,450 inhabitants were directly engaged in the industry either as shoemakers or uppermakers. By 1983, Marikina produced 70 percent of the shoe production of the Philippines which was estimated at 30 million pairs.