In 2010, the prospects for the thousands of young people beginning to enter the labor market were not rosy. According to the newspaper EL PAÍS, the unemployment rate for young people under 25 reached 40% this year. Many left Spain to work abroad. This dichotomy of staying or going abroad in search of opportunities also crossed the minds of Claudia Pérez Polo and Pablo Izquierdo López. She is an industrial designer and he is an architect. They chose to stay in Spain and took part in a project related to the world of shoes, an initiative realized in the Naguisa company, a brand that, more than ten years after its birth, has grown both inside and outside of our borders triumphs. “It all started with a handmade shoe class we did in Barcelona. I come from a shoemaking tradition, my father worked in the shoe industry, he had shoe shops, he was a shopkeeper”, S Moda Pérez Polo, co-founder of Naguisa, explains the birth of the company. “My father at the time told us that he couldn’t find any other offer of espadrilles on the market, he had seen the same thing for many years,” he recalls. And encouraged by the idea, at the age of just 27 they started their own project related to shoes, specifically artisan shoes that were initially worn by the humblest of farmers and eventually grew into a summer success that transcends our borders. .
In the words of Claudia: “The espadrille is a very traditional product of our land, very handmade. We started seeing how it was made, we visited workshops and it won us over. We made a small sampler with a test on the national market, it worked and the following year we went to an international fair”. It was 2012, a pivotal year in the brand’s history. By then, the two founders had combined other works with Naguisa, but after going through an international fair in Paris, where they received orders from Japan and various orders from Europe, they confirmed that the project was serious. “With espadrilles we found our market niche and we started as a summer brand, we just designed these shoes.”
From Barcelona to Japan and South Korea
The name of the brand invites us to travel more than 10,400 kilometers from Barcelona, where the company is based, to reach Japan. “Naguisa is a Japanese name that refers to the mark left by sea foam on the shore. We knew the term because Barcelona’s fairgrounds were designed by Toyo Ito, a Japanese architect. He designed some benches for this fair that have a wavy shape and this bench is called Naguisa. We fell in love with the meaning of the word,” he explains. The symbolism of the sea goes perfectly with the most Mediterranean shoes in the wardrobe, a design that Pérez Polo says has gained traction in recent years. “The espadrille is a product that has been greatly appreciated over the past decade. When we started we put high quality skins on the lining, you can’t see it but it’s where the contact is with the foot so it can breathe. We also designed the box and in the factories they told us, ‘You are not going to sell this at this price because no one is going to buy it from you’. There used to be a tendency to make it as cheap as possible and the espadrille was conceived as a very affordable product because in the past it was made at home by grandmothers. In the last ten years, the espadrille has been re-evaluated on the national market before being appreciated abroad, but now here too”.
Evidence of Naguisa’s good reception was soon reflected in its catalogue, which began to diversify in 2014 with the launch of its now emblematic braided sandals, a “manual and artisanal” design also linked to the shoemaking tradition of the region .
The foreign country that has most associated with Naguisa’s proposals is South Korea. As they explain, “we started working with them six years ago and today it is one of our main markets.” So much so that they have an Instagram account entirely dedicated to their Korean audience. Claudia believes that the success has to do with the Asian country’s idea of the artisanal product. “Also, our shoes are comfortable, they are very functional designs. It is intended for everyday use and the particularity of being handmade attracts them very much, the theme of naturalness is very appreciated.”
Overcoming obstacles in the footwear industry
Export accounts for 70% of the company’s turnover, with Italy and the United States being other relevant markets. “As a single market, the national market is the most consolidated,” they point out. And they confirm that their strength in the physical point of sale continues, with their designs being distributed in multi-brand stores and in specialized shoe stores: “Between 60 and 70% are sold in physical points of sale, physical distribution and between 30 and 40 digital ” . In In these ten years they have opened a physical store in Ciutadella de Menorca – “a somewhat personal project due to the relationship we have with the island” – and they have expanded the team to a total of 13. But perhaps most importantly, they have not are more limited to summer collections.To boost the growth of the company, for three years they have been betting on winter products with slippers made in Portugal.The rest of the shoes are made in different parts of our geography, such as La Rioja, where the hand-sewn espadrilles are made, or Alicante (Elda and Elche) for the braided sandals.
The company’s creativity, which is reflected in the design of its models, but also in the brand concept and positioning as an independent label, is one of Naguisa’s trademarks. The company transmits its philosophy not only through its espadrilles and sandals, but also through the Spotify lists that it shares with its community or through the news published in the company magazine, bringing together interviews, tutorials or parts of the manufacturing process designs. If setting up a company in Spain is a challenge in itself, the last few years have brought additional hurdles. Naguisa survived the pandemic, quite an achievement when we consider the debacle the textile sector suffered with the destruction of 35,000 jobs and the closure of 17,000 stores, according to data from Acotex, and now it is weathering the storm that is looming about the shoe industry due to rising prices. “Inflation has hit us hard in the last two years. Now the end user is seeing an impact, but for the last two years the skins and dyes have gone up. And the increase in electricity has hit all the leather tanneries, there have been factories that have had to close because they couldn’t feed themselves.” There is also the added problem of working well in advance: “We have a year and a half before the launch of the collection with us started with the design and the fluctuations in price mean that the materials have costs that change every six months.” Step by step, Naguisa goes further and, facing the new season, defies the somber scenarios with bright color accents that appear in her collection of embroidered espadrilles or her vitamin-colored ones Sandals can be found with a nod to trends without sacrificing their distinctive features. aesthetic codes.
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