“It would be great if we managed to reach 60 million crowns this year,” said Vít Staněk, head of the Botas shoe company, during a major interview for Hrot in March this year. “I think our goals are realistic,” he added shortly after. The manufacturer of the legendary boots almost went out of business last year, but was saved at the last moment by another footwear company Vasky, which is run by Staňk’s older brother Václav.
Now it seems that these plans will be fulfilled. This year, the company aims for sales of 70 million crowns without VAT, it has already earned over 32.5 million crowns and wants to double this figure by the end of the year. Last year, Botas sold 12,000 pairs of shoes, this year’s goal is to sell 35,000 pairs of shoes. “And it looks like the brand will succeed in surpassing this number,” Staněk now believes.
Botas is now celebrating 75 years since its founding, so the brand has prepared a limited collection that commemorates the achievements of Czech and Czechoslovakian athletes. She returned netball shoes to the portfolio and started offering sweatshirts, T-shirts, tracksuits and socks.
“A lot of successes in boots have gone down in history. For me, the greatest role model was Emil Zátopek, whose statue I used to see in the Zlín athletics stadium during every training session. As a reminder of his great achievements, we designed one variant in the colors of Zlín – yellow and black,” recalls Vasek boss Václav Staněk.
The collection will offer footwear in the colors of the Mexican flag to commemorate Věra Čáslavská’s victory in Mexico in 1968. Another version is inspired by the success of the national hockey team in Nagano, the blue version refers to the performance of František Venclovský, who was the first Czechoslovak to swim across the English Channel.
Botas opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Prague this year, and plans to significantly increase their number in the future. One of them is to be built in Bratislava. “We already operate in Slovakia, but we don’t have a store there yet. That is the first thing I would like to change now – I want to expand there in full fire,” confirmed Vít Staněk Hrotu.
Recently, the brand opened its first concept store in Prague at Černý Most. And the company is now thinking about expanding to China or Japan.
With the contribution of CTK
