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 Croatia’s Once Mighty Shoe Firm Finds its Feet

Vogue’s recognition of its Startas sneakers is only the latest sign that the humbled economic giant in Vukovar is on the way back up.

Startas sneakers in the same colours as when they were first designed in 1976. | Photo: Borovo.hr

Startas sneakers - already on their way to becoming a global brand - gained further recognition on the design scene when Vogue in December featured its pink sneakers with unicorns as a “must-have” fashion item for all those who “want to indulge the inner child”.

The sneakers are a product of Borovo, a shoe company from a satellite neighbourhood to the eastern Croatian town of Vukovar.

While Startas shoes are now becoming a top selling export, their basic design has existed for 40 years.

Borovo was founded by the Czech industrialist Jan Bata, owner of Bata shoe industry, in 1931, when he built the whole neighbourhood for company workers.

During communist Yugoslavia, between 1945 and 1990, the now nationalised company became a giant in production and sales of shoe ware, rubber and special rubber products.

Doing business across federal Yugoslavia with a network of 620 shops, Borovo was the second biggest company based in Croatia, behind the energy company INA.

In its glory days, it employed 23,000 people and each year turned out 23 million pairs of foot ware, 580,000 car tires and 12,500 tons of technical rubber products. It became a symbol of production and prosperity in Vukovar, which was then a hub for production and employment.

Borovo shoes and its popular brands, such as Startas, were worn by all generations of Yugoslavs.

The legendary Borosana model. | Photo: Facebook

However, their brand of women’s working shoes, worn mostly by cleaning ladies and waitresses, the legendary Borosana shoe, was a symbol of working women and gained a special place in the urban lexicon. They remained widely seen in Croatia even after the break-up of Yugoslavia.

Following the virtual destruction of Vukovar in 1991, when the Yugoslav Army and Serbian paramilitaries besieged and overran the town, production stopped and the “golden days” were over.

After the war, over a period of over 15 years, the company debts rose to some 22 million euro by August 2013, when it entered pre-bankruptcy procedures.

The company has since reduced its debt to about 9 million euro, however, after taking out loans of another 4.5 million euro to keep afloat.

It recorded a net profit of some 800,000 euro in 2014, with operational losses of some 3.3 million euro. In 2015, the company expects to make no operational losses.

The turnaround in fact began in the late 2000s when the company went into redesigning its legendary models, mostly in terms of colours, while keeping the original Borosana, which was originally designed in cooperation with orthopaedists to enable working women to comfortably wear a higher heel at work.

The youngest star of the Borovo family – Boromina. | Photo: Borovo.hr

They have since produced the Boromina, a more fashionable version of the Borosana.

Although the company is now down to only 787 employees, 500 of them employed in the Borovo factory, brighter days lie ahead.

By hiring young designers and using social networks to profile themselves as a hand-made shoe producer, Borovo managed to exit a slump and become a globally recognized product.

After battling for success in pools around the world and winning Olympic medals for both former Yugoslavia and Croatia, 49-year-old former water polo player Dubravko Simenc, now “plays” for Borovo.

As brand manager for the Startas sneakers, Simenc shared his pride in their success with BIRN.

Young designer – the idea behind a shoe Iva Curkovic Spajic, a 30-year-old designer, started work in Borovo two years ago, entering the shoe industry for the first time. She got a post in the company by designing the Boromina, a fashionable version of the Borosana. “I got the job in Borovo by chance, because few years earlier I had already designed some shoes for one shoemaker… I made the Boromina some two years before Borovo did it,” she recalled. “I tailored Borosana at a shoemaker in Zagreb and a few of my friends started to wear them, and then a friend of the director saw it,” she explained, adding that Borovo then approached her since they needed a designer. Curkovic Spajic said the company will keep up hand-made production of Startas sneakers, no matter how big demand gets. She said the image of the brand in the US, where a pair sells for some 80 dollars (73 euro), was constructed around something that was hand-made in Croatia in the EU and therefore it did not need to be priced like sneakers produced en masse in Asia. “I would like this Vogue acknowledgment to have an echo in Croatia and popularize Startas,” she said. “Sometimes, something needs to be appreciated abroad in order to become appreciated here in Croatia,” she added. “I hope people won’t only talk about it, but will come to our stores and buy some of the products and so support the domestic production,” she concluded.

“There is a global trend these days that’s returning to domestic production. People got tired of ‘made in China’ or ‘made in Vietnam’,” he said.

“Production of Startas shoes goes through 23 pair of hands of Borovo working women… Hand-made production and natural materials is something that the world recognizes,” he added.

“We cannot have mass production, but what we make we make with love, with putting our hearts in it,” Simenc continued.

“The thing we like to play with is design,” he went on, naming the two young designers of Startas shoes, Iva Curkovic Spajic and Hana Ciliga.

Simenc explained that besides the two designers and 23 women in Borovo, the team responsible for the brand musters only four people, including him.

Inside the Borovo shoe factory. | Photo: Borovo.hr

He also explained how they spread to various global markets and the especially important US market, where Startas representatives Robert and Michelle Grgurev did “an amazing job” in promoting the product.

“This is the third generation of Croats born in the US who have their own businesses but who did this promotion, not as a core business but as a hobby business,” he recalled.

“They did an amazing job, succeeding in getting a mention of Startas’s name appeared on the Vogue website,” he noted.

Simenc said the only thing the company needed from the state was a little help in modernizing and furnishing their 103 Croatia-based shops and shoes, as well as in reviving the one-time high school for shoe ware production in Borovo. It is hoped that the academy could turn out a younger generation in the Vukovar region that is eager to be part of the Borovo family.

Simenc said Borovo lacks the cash to conduct global and extensive promotion and advertising and so depends on a small group of “committed enthusiasts”.

Nevertheless, he emphasized that Borovo remains known throughout the former Yugoslavia, where “it is still a powerful symbol.

“This is our wish… to come back to the market in Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Macedonia and Montenegro. We use to have shops in all these countries, but, during the time that is behind us, the shop were sold, unfortunately,” he added.

“One has to bear in mind that Borovo once sold 23 million pairs of shoe ware annually”, he said, adding that those days are behind them. Now Borovo fights to maintain its level of production in a town that experienced massive destruction and casualties during the dark days of 1991.

“We want to show both Croats and the world that something good can come from Vukovar,” Simenc concluded.

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