BEHIND A SHOE, A LOOK BEYOND

Do you know how many hands touch a shoe before you can put it on?

I plead guilty. I "am one of those" who thought that to make a shoe you put all the ingredients in a shaker and after a while a shoe would come out made as if it were a churrera. I understood that if someone could make them and sell them for €20, this had It has to function in this or similar way.
Indeed, when you enter the world of footwear you realize that nothing could be further from reality. that are used for it.

I would love to tell you that my father was a shoemaker and that we have been making shoes for more than 40 years in our factory in Elda. And that's why we make shoes and we make them so well. But I would lie to you. My father was a spectacular person, one of the people I have most admired in my life, but he never made shoes. However, I have been very lucky to be able to work with people who do have this path and who have given me the great opportunity to work with them and create what, today, is Just-ENE.
When I passed the barrier of the “obsessed shoe buyer” for the first time and entered the first factory, I perfectly understood what it was all about. After this first visit, I understood that, behind each shoe, there is a story, a work of art of a series of artisans who specialize in their work and manage to create something that borders on perfection.

Seldom have I felt more ignorant than when I was shown the multiple manufacturing errors of the "example shoe" that I thought I would take to the factory. I had never ever stopped to analyze these details. A shoe was simply a shoe, that something pretty that lengthened your legs and fixed your look more disaster.

However, when you enter Elda, you talk to designers, pattern makers, manufacturers, suppliers... you enter a world in which the passion for their work is tradition, and this is breathed in the environment.

I remember with special emotion my recent visit to this first manufacturer with whom I spoke in its day.

He was the first person in the world of manufacturing that I went to see, when Just-ENE was nothing more than a woman with tremendous enthusiasm, very little idea of ​​this world, an "example shoe" and some papers in hand explaining what he wanted to do. He explained to me the reality of what was behind what he wanted to do and thought, perhaps rightly, that she was crazy, but few things could stop her from fighting for what she wanted.

After more than a year I repeated my visit, I cannot describe what I felt when I could see the emotion on his face when he saw what we had created. At that moment we realized that, at the very least, we had managed to do something special. And it is true, behind each pair of shoes there is a job, a love, an emotion.

I started with an illusion, some photos and some ideas of what I wanted to do. But this does not end here, the search for quality materials continued. I still remember the first Just-ENE. Our "test skin" turned out to be such a disaster that I ended up taking a black felt-tip pen to redraw the pattern that faded every time I brushed while walking... Of course, not everything is as easy as it seems. Undoubtedly, a bad material is capable of ruining a good shoe and this is proof of it.

And if I told you that, in a simple Just-ENE shoe, the work of more than 15 different people and suppliers is involved? And that the success of a shoe depends on the good work of all of them?

We design a shoe, the patterns are made, it is mounted on a last, it has soles, heels, skins, internal reinforcements (buttresses), the logo on the soles, the zipper puller, the decorations, the soles that they shape the shoe... and all this is taken to manufacturing... we cut the skin, we sew it (apparate), we assemble the shoe, we nail the heel, we glue the sole......

Just to give you an idea I'll tell you that, for example, our Irene sandal, has spent more than 10 hours of work just on the upper

Like everything in life, every detail counts and each part is essential to get a job well done, and that is what we fight for every day at Just-ENE, we try to give our best so that each of you can take your dream home.

A big hug,

Irene Gil

Founder of Just-ENE