Russians are making for decades the most remarkable footwear that resist the cold winter of Siberia. They call them Valenki. These shoes are hand-made and 100 % out of wool. The secret of these shoes are that they are molded into one piece without any stitches.

 

We recognised the unique features of these shoes and decided to bring back an old tradition back to life. So we started to learn how to make them, developed new technologies  to produce them, but still keeping the core values of these products. We have not gone to the traditional patch to outsource the production but decided to build everything in-house where we can control the quality and provide a fair trade working space for the employees.

 

In the timeframe of one year, we have mounted a fully operational production environment, developed our own technology and trained employees to produce the shoes. Our aim is to be as environmental friendly as possible. To produce the shoes, we only use wool, water and soap.

Our current slipper collection:

To make the Baabuk, we only use water, soap and wool. The wool layers are felted around the a molding shape. Each molding shape is around 30 % bigger than the final shoe.

We continue to felt and felt until we reached the desired thickness

Then we continue to felt with steam to reduce the size of the shoe and create a stong felt.

... and more felting ;)

When the felt shoe has scrink the final size, we use shoe last to give the final shape.

Then we put the shoes for drying.