(CNN) -- As protests continue across the Middle East, American shoemaker Bahman Irvani remembers 1979. That year, he and his family fled Iran after the revolution leaving behind their thriving footwear business. "We left Iran because the government took over not only our businesses but our personal assets as well," said 59-year-old Irvani, whose family had been manufacturing shoes there for over 50 years. In 1983, the family business was reborn, a long way from Iran, in Buford, Georgia in the United States. Irvani called his new enterprise "Okabashi" in honor of the Japanese practice of reflexology and, as the company's website states their shoes have: "tiny massaging beads are strategically placed across the foot-bed of each shoe to stimulate different areas of the sole."
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Okabashi footwear lets you send your old shoes back to be recycled
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All new shoes are made with up to 25% recycled material
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U.S.-based family-run business was started in Iran in the 1950s
All the materials @placeholder use are entirely recyclable, Irvani says.