A summary of the VELT story

When we were younger, the shoes we loved were Nike Air Max, Converse Chucks, and Adidas Originals. As we got older, we couldn't find the shoes we wanted to love anywhere. If not sneakers again, then: too boring, too traditional, too elitist, too not our style. We decided to design the shoes we wanted to wear ourselves.

That was in 2012, when our story begins, with the ambitious goal of producing unique and sustainable leather shoes. The manufacturers we approached weren't interested and discouraged us, saying, “It's impossible and nobody wants them.” They wished us luck on our journey. We courageously decided to produce the shoes ourselves. The first shoes were made in a small workshop belonging to a shoemaker friend in Veltheim (Switzerland), which is where our name comes from.

With our first collection, we won the Swiss Design Award from the Federal Office of Culture in 2013 (https://www.bak.admin.ch/bak/de/home/aktuelles/bildergalerien/schweizer-designpreise---swiss-design-awards/eidgenoessische-designpreise-2013.html). We developed a new style for men's leather shoes, which became much sportier and combined the natural material cork. The Museum of Design in Zurich and the Museu da Chapelaria Portugal took notice of our shoes and purchased them for their collections. Monocle magazine from London named us “best footwear newcomer 2013” in the same year. Three years later, in 2016, we won the Swiss Design Award from the Federal Office of Culture again for a sole that adapts to multiple sizes, thereby saving costs in shoe production. 

The effort is paying off and our brand is going from strength to strength. In 2018, we realized that our workshop was becoming too small. So we started looking for ways to produce differently while remaining true to our ideals. At the beginning of 2020, we found a workshop in Portugal that meets our standards and wants to grow with us in terms of environmental protection.

At that moment, the pandemic strikes. March 2020 arrives, and everything comes to a standstill! Italy is hit particularly hard, and so is the shoe industry. We purchase important components that we need for the production of our shoes in Italy. But everything has come to a standstill in Italy, and we are unable to obtain important components for our production. Within a very short time, our most important sizes are sold out, and we are no longer able to produce.