Japanese shoe company asks: Which woman has the prettiest feet?

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Locondo-ashimoto-bijin

Locondo is a Japanese online shoes retailer that we have mentioned a few times before. It provides the same sort of experience you’ll find at real stores, allowing users to try on shoes before they actually buy them 1. The company is taking a unique approach to user acquisition, recently partnering with Bijin-Tokei. This is a popular site among men that features 50,000 good-looking ladies holding cards that tell what time it is. That’s a different girl for every minute.

Together two companies are holding a ‘prettiest feet’ contest called Ashimoto-Bijin General Election. ‘Ashimoto’ means ‘foot’ in Japanese, and Bijin means ‘beautiful woman’. The contest began on August 5th, and a total of 102 Bijin Tokei models are running as candidates to become the party leader for the ‘Ashimoto‘ (a playful name that can mean both ‘foot’ and ‘foot party’). The chosen winner will be a model at Locondo for their shoes.

For anyone with a thing for shoes – or even for those of you with a foot fetish – the pictures collected over on Locondo will make for interesting browsing. From sneakers to sandals to high heels, it’s all there. At first glance they are just photos of shoes and feet, but by mousing over the photo, you can see a profile pic of the girl model. Most of the shoes that the girls are wearing are available for purchase on the site.

Voting in this general election will be closed on August 26th. Anyone with a Facebook account can cast a ballot.

This tactic of holding ‘general elections’ is becoming an increasingly common marketing tactic among brands here in Japan. We recently wrote about how beer maker Sapporo used a similar sort of vote to drum up some attention for a new flavor lager.


  1. Readers may recall that back in June the company announced that it had successfully raised 6.3 million yen.