>> Footwear production at Vasky trade, May 12, 2022 in Lhota near Zlín
Skuteč (Chrudimsko) – The shoe company Vasky from Zlín wants to buy the Botas brand, it is negotiating with the owner of the company about terms. He wants to get the money for the buyout by selling some of his models, said the founder of the Zlín company Václav Staněk in a press release. Footwear under the name Botas was produced in Skutč in Chrudim since 1963. The company has been in liquidation since this year, according to the management of the company, the rise in energy prices and the lack of qualified labor were to blame.
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“Thanks to the values that we share with the current owners of Botas, the possibility of buying the brand has opened up for us. We have shown interest and it looks like we are on the right track. However, now we do not have enough funds to buy it back. That's why we decided to sell Vaska for Botas. From then on, I promise myself that we will eventually succeed in making this dream come true,” said Staněk.
Some models of Vasky shoes are discounted by up to 33 percent. According to Staňek, it should be enough to sell 8,000 pairs so that the Zlín company can buy the Botas brand and continue production, just under a different owner.
“When I founded Vasky, I set myself the goal that in the Czech Republic honest cobblers lived. So that Czech shoes remain a part of our country, not just its history. The Botas company was one of the reasons why I believed it was real. That's why I called the owner of the company right after I learned that the brand was in liquidation. We quickly found a common ground,” said Staněk.
The company was originally called Botana and was established in 1949 by the merger of smaller nationalized companies from Skutč and its surroundings. The Botas brand is a combination of the words bota and Skuteč. In the 1990s, the company had turnovers of hundreds of millions of crowns, but sometimes losses of tens of millions of crowns. It produced hundreds of thousands of pairs of shoes a year for Puma, Jofa and Salomon, but had low margins on them.
Production gradually dropped to tens of thousands of pairs a year. Around 80 percent of the total production accounted for sports shoes, the company focused on ice hockey, figure skating, skiing, summer and indoor sports.
The company has been producing urban boots since 2009, the company collaborated on the Botas 66 collection for ten years with designers who prepared new models for each season. The number refers to the year 1966, when the boots got one wide stripe on the sides, which distinguishes it from other brands.
Even in 1991, the company employed 2,400 people, ten years later it had half as many workers. By now, the number of workers has dropped to seven dozen. The sole shareholder of Botas is Benal.
