The handmade footwear made in Chaco that arrived in New York

CÓRDOBA.- Gaston Greco He is from Chaco, is 33 years old and came to the City of Buenos Aires to study Architecture. His father was an “entrepreneur” and he, when he left school, was used to helping him. When he finished the basic cycle he felt that he lacked “that adrenaline” and between models, and took apart a shoe with a box cutter. That was the origin, in 2012, of the posco shoe brand who makes some 20,000 pairs per year and has a place in New Yorkwhere he also sells online.

“I did not feel identified with any brand or product that gave strength to Argentine leather -Greek count to THE NATION-. I wanted to do something but He had no contacts, no experience, no capital. I still got on the subject.”

The tour took time because he went with his first idea to the neighborhood shoemaker who told him that it could not be manufactured. He continued through the Once neighborhood, where he “discovered” that it was not for shoe manufacturers; in boedo met with “the world of saddlery and leather”. He maintains that he went through the entire learning curve and found suppliers and manufacturers who accompanied and taught him.

To move forward, he began manufacturing espadrilles in Chaco, where later they also produced the first samples of Posco with which Greco traveled “store by store throughout Palermo” to sell them.

“It was a three-piece leather model; versatile and comfortable -Explain-. The strong idea is also functionality; that came to me from my architecture studies”. When they reached 500 pairs per month, he decided transfer production to an establishment in Lomas del Mirador, in Buenos Aires.

The condition they put on him that he had to go to work: “I learned a lot; he used the machines. For me it was a division park ”. He was extending the commercialization to different multi-brand locations from CABA, Córdoba, Rosario, Chaco, Misiones and Corrientes.

In 2016, it moved forward with its own premises in an old house in Palermo, in Pasaje Santa Rosa, 200 meters from Plaza Armenia. “Although he was a fashion outsider, we were doing things in that world,” he says. He remembers that He stopped Martín Churba one day when he saw him running through Palermo and told her story. “We did something with his brand, Tramando, and we also sent pairs to Japan”.

I knew the plastic artist Milo Locket Resistance -He’s also from Chaco- and asked him if he could paint some hides for him. “He drew me some drawings and told me ‘do whatever you want’. That also opened many doors for me in different stores ”, she reviews.

The project started with an investment of $5000 that his mother had given him when Greco went to study. In his opinion, the growth of the brand has to do with being multitasker (shoes for various uses) and with being “authentic”.

“The heart is in those who manufacture it, we think about the products from the functional, from the solution. The first models were the ones that cut, the ones that sewed, my grandparents from Chaco. We were building on authenticity, with the ecosystem of the product”.

The brand had some spikes in popularity. One was when Grecco wrote a letter to Mauricio Macri when he was elected president; he made it by hand and put it in a box with a pair of slippers and sent it to her. The day after taking office he appeared with that pair at the Quinta de Olivos. “They said that Juliana (Awada) had liked them and she had chosen them and that generated a lot of repercussions.” He met Macri later, at the Casa Rosada.

Before the start Soccer World Cup 2018 in Russia, Greco decided that he wanted to make the shoes for the players of the Argentine National Team; he presented the project and explained that the brand understands Argentine leather as part of the national identity. He made them shoes for every day and, obviously, that Lionel Messi, Ángel Di María or Javier Macherano the lucieran gave him a high level of knowledge.

“The National Team has high visibility worldwide, so it was interesting that the players used a product made 100% with Argentine leather and manufactured by Argentine hands,” he says. Those shoes were produced by “tano Francisco”, an Italian immigrant who arrived in Argentina decades ago and who, in the ’90 World Cup, made Diego Maradona’s boots.

The 2018 World Cup edition was carried out by the company in association with the AFA on a vegetable tanned leather; they were sustainable shoes. The basic model was the Ábaco Fit, a classic of the brand, to which they made three stitches by hand in light blue and white as if they were the Argentine flag; they had the logo of the AFA and FIFA and special templates for more comfort of the players.

“With the same idea that Argentine leather makes our identity, We faced the expansion project three years ago. We decided that we should take our models out of Argentina. I went to live in New York for a while to promote the marketing of what we export”, he mentions.

The brand has its own store in the barrio Greenpoint de Brooklyn and sell online. In Argentina the place is in Recoleta. Greco emphasizes that he is “committed” to his company and that, from the start, he sought an “impact” with an idea that “represents Argentina.”

Getting to the United States required around two years of work and even the disembarkation -which was first online- was delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic. The businessman explains that the challenges they had to overcome were “important” since production in Argentina was delayed due to the quarantine, they had to close their stores and, in addition, logistics costs increased “strongly”.

They manufacture footwear models for men and women and also accessories. The first thing they sold online in the United States was the “Resistencia Canvas”, a model designed in Argentina and produced in Brazil, at the Dois Irmaos factory that complies with the ILO names. The footwear is made with recycled cotton from Guatemala.