RALPH WENGE, CNN ANCHOR: Fish are also a popular item at a factory in Italy. But not because they're good to eat, instead, the company takes parts that food processors throw away and then turns them into something attractive to wear. Italy's AK TV tells us how.</s>ROBERTA LANZARA, AK TV CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): This is Lucca, an 11th-century town in the south of Italy that is home to 11,000 inhabitants. People here make their living mainly in the fields of agriculture and handicraft. The local shoe factory is a success story that draws visitors and journalists to the town. The actual shoes made here are entirely hand sewn, then exported and sold in the most expensive stores all over the world. The latest innovation here is the fish shoes that are made from fish scales like salmon, codfish, perch. The skin used is a reject from the fishing industry. It comes mostly from Lake Victoria in Africa or the North Atlantic Ocean. A special German patent was required to don the skin of the fish. Handmaking shoes is a long process which requires highly skilled individuals. The local shoe factory employs 60 people and produces only 30,000 pairs of shoes a year. A pair of handmade leather shoes in a fancy Rome or Milan store may cost between 350 to 750 U.S. dollars. The fish shoes are a little cheaper with the price tag of $250 to $400.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE (through translator): Of course we make shoes with fish skin, but also we sell tan fish skin for multiple purposes all over the world. At the moment, we are working on a project to create a big tannery for fish skin in Calabria (ph).</s>LANZARA: Salvadore Bichete (ph) would like to utilize fish skin in all sectors where leather is used; an ambitious goal considering that the world leather market is estimated at approximately $150 billion. In the meantime, some artists in laboratories around Lucca are experimenting with the fish skin and it looks like they are achieving good results. This is Roberta Lanzara, AK TV, for CNN WORLD REPORT.
Italy Shoe Factory Turns Fish Into Fashion