Eager To Deliver, Native Is No One-Hit Wonder
By now, Damian Van Zyll De Jong and Matthew Penner, founders of Native Shoes, might just as well affix the word “celebrated” to their vision of having an “unconventional footwear company producing lightweight and iconic footwear.” It didn’t take long for the prestigious Red Dot to recognize Native’s cleverness and all, for the product design of its Fitzsimmons boots.
“Design quality has asserted itself clearly in the judging process, with genuine and new creative solutions also being rewarded. Both of these criteria are not just yardsticks for good design, but also for the potential for success on the market. This potential is increased several times over by the targeted use of our renowned design award,” Dr. Peter Zec, Red Dot initiator, hints about the points on the selection process of the winners of the prestigious and international design award.
“It’s a great honor given that none of us have a traditional background in industrial design or even footwear development,” Penner says of the Fitzsimmons award, which he along with overseas operations head, Esme Smith, exhibited at the Red Dot Design Museum in Tanjong Pagar, Singapore. “We came at footwear development from an outside perspective and brought new ideas to the table. And to see those ideas get validated by an organization like Red Dot really helps to give us the confidence to push the design envelope and continue to experiment. When we do footwear, we hardly aimed to win an award; we just wanted to make something that relates with the consumer. If it becomes a design icon, then that’s just icing on the cake,” Penner adds.
“We started with the Millers, the Jeffersons and the Corrados, that was how the brand has been thought out, to bring the three models to the market. Right away, the feedback was overwhelming. As soon as the orders came in, it was like, okay we actually have a company and a brand. And then we would have to design for another season, then Native is now where it is, an all-year brand,” Smith says looking back at the whirlwind of developments the brand has made.
“It was sort of saying that we are at first doing a ‘one-hit wonder’ with skeptics saying at the back of their minds, ‘great concept, let's see how long they get to sell that concept, that’s probably all they’ve got.’ And I think when we came up with the Fitzsimmons, it was clearly the beginning of a lot more ideas coming our way, giving us a lot of confidence to deliver for our customers, for them to expect something different, something a lot cooler,” Penner enthuses.
Still with plenty of powwow to their bag of tricks, Native is set to deliver two designs equally worthy of yet another Red Dot recognition—the utilitarian and urbane Jimmy lace-up boots and the brazen Paddington wellies.
The Fitzsimmons, a run-up name from the founders’ snowboarding exploits, sums up the brand’s successful take on expanding its selection of ultra lightweight, one-piece slip-ons, paving the way for a more progressive design DNA. The hiking boot-inspired shoe offers a novel take on the heavy and often forsaken style of common boots: soft and lightweight EVA upper, metallic D-ring eyelets with round firm laces, a neoprene liner with tongue and heel pull loops, lightly-padded foot bed for added comfort with a pair weighing a mere 0.81 pound. Intended as a winter boot, a pair hardly felt warm and was great to wade through puddles and soaked up in the rain. Talking about weightlessness, a hotel butler cannot help but ask what boots he got his hands on after handing over a few of this writer’s belongings. “Native?” he asked, puzzled that a pair of boots can be even lighter than half a pair of shoes.
Primer Group of Companies, is the exclusive distributor of Native Shoes in the country. Native, at Native Kiosk Trinoma, R.O.X. (Bonifacio High Street and Cebu), Rustan’s (Alabang Town Center and Makati), Duty Free Philippines Sport mart, Selected Shoe Salon, Res|Toe|Run and BratPack stores, Lonely Planet (Iloilo, Dumaguete, Embarcadero, Boracay), The Sidewalk (Zamboanga), Mian’s Closet (Iloilo), Bajunaid Fashion Store, Sportmart Baguio, Sportsub, Team Sports (Cabanatuan and Iloilo), Chimes ( Davao), Gaisano ( Davao), Footworks (Isabela) and High Haven. Also check out Native Shoes Philippines on Facebook. - Article courtesy of Manila Bulletin.
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