knu Actually I studied business, I never studied design. I moved to Germany, started a work there, and after five years I wanted to change my career. I wanted to do something more creative. That’s why I moved to Spain, and I did my masters.

After that, I was looking into learning more, not necessarily design, but something creative. And of course, I always liked clothes and at the time, my friend who is now my partner at Paracia, he was already doing intermediary production work for other brands. He lived in China at the time and, one day he said to me “hey, why don’t we just start something? I know how to produce, I have some contacts in China, and you know business. So let’s do it”. That’s how we started.

But at the time, I also got into the methodology of design through my masters. After one year, I joined a design studio. So since I had that business background I entered as a design strategist. I worked there for six years. I was doing more strategic part, but I was working with different designers like UX/UI, graphic, visual, interactive designer – with that I was learning design. While I was building the brand, I had to learn the design of the product as well. It was learning by doing.

knu We started this project in 2014. At that time, looking at the footwear industry, it was dominated by mainstream brands like Nike, adidas, Puma, etc., and also some small independent brands were emerging with their own sort of design. We understood that there was a market that we could enter as a small brand.

We didn’t have education in fashion design, so doing clothes was something that we didn’t feel comfortable doing. But footwear was more about product, so we realized this was something we could start, that we had a contact with and we saw that it was a niche market. At the same time, we wanted to create something that could be valuable for customers, because at the time, the offers that you had were mainly from mainstream brands. Our thought was “why don’t we create something that is more local and independent?”. That’s how we started.

At the time I was living in Europe and my friend was in China. He moved back to Seoul, so we produced between China and Korea. We tried to make footwear in some factories in Korea, but the quality was not as good as Chinese factories. Now we mainly work with them for footwear, and our caps are produced in Korea. We are also working with one Spanish factory right now to introduce new models. 

When we started the brand we mainly sold in Korea, we had our office and a small shop. We were selling through our launch store and multiple stores in South Korea. At that time, I was working full time, plus one to three different jobs, and also, in our company we were still doing that intermediary work for other brands – imagine that you have a clothing brand and you don’t know how to produce or design shoes, so then they come to us and we help them design new models according to their direction. We also have factories in the middle where we produce a reduced quality control and then we deliver the goods, so that business is always there.

Since we were doing all this other stuff, the brand was kind of dying. It was there but nobody was able to take care of it. So I wanted to leave the studio I was working for to do this project, but then COVID happened and I couldn’t leave the studio. It prolonged another two years. Eventually in 2021, when everything was coming back to normal, I finally left my studio to dedicate myself full time to Paracia.

But me being in Madrid trying to sell our products in Korea, was not really working. We decided to revamped the brand, rebranded everything, introduced new models and then we opened this store we are at, then I moved the center point to Madrid. From here, we started introducing this new brand in the European market, we went to Paris to introduce our collection, and worked with small boutique stores.

knu Right now we have this store and our online store. We also started working with some multi-brand stores, mainly in Europe. The next step for the brand will be having more presence, with different products through other multi-brand stores. That’s a way that we can introduce our products to a wider audience. We are also working on some collaborations as well with other brands.

knu When I was young I really liked sneakers. I had the Reeboks, you know, the basketball shoes. I also had probably one of the first models of the Nike Air Max models, they were my favorite shoes. There was a big hit of Air Max 95s, 97s, so I always had them. I always liked shoes and sneakers but I couldn’t afford to buy lots of them, but I always had at least one pair of good shoes that I liked. Nowadays, I don’t wear them so much, but I still like them, especially when it comes to design. I like it a lot.

knu

This is the model we had before we launched the boots and the whole shoe line. Before we had more sneaker products, but since there’s so many independent brands doing footwear, we felt that the models we had before were just too simple. We realized that we needed to differentiate from other brands. This runner style is actually more difficult to produce than flat shoes with cup soles, because usually these shoes have just one or two materials, and the upper design is simpler. So it’s easy to make for small brands.

Then the R-Type, the original design is from an 80s Runner. In the 70s, these materials like EVA, were not invented and you had to have several layers of outsole, but later on it was invented by Nike. And what we do as a brand is to always try to reinterpret, or find a new way of making a traditional, classic shoe, footwear design. It’s already been done and there are so many good designs, but we give a little bit of contemporary touch to it.

For this model in particular, what we did is that the outsole is slightly bigger than a usual runner, so that you can have a bit of a contemporary look. There are some versions that are a bit more clean colorways, because we always need to have these, but this one that I picked has a special leather from an English tannery called CF Stead, and we worked with them on a lot of our boot models. So you can have this special effect and this distress look to match with the type of leather. The outsole is our own design, of course it looks similar to traditional runners, but we have our small P logos on there.

This model is called R-Type 01 and we are working on the R-Type 02. Since it’s a runner, that’s why it’s “R” type. That’s why we have D-Type, B-Type and so on. “B” type is for boots, D type is for derbies and C types is for caps. So all our models have the name of type.

One of the things that we don’t do is, we never put our logos on our products. We have logos, of course in the insole, but outside you don’t see any logo. That’s one of the values and philosophy of the brand – our approach is that good design should be recognized by the design itself, by the materials used, you don’t have to put a big logo to know which brand it is. For example, I love chairs, like these named pieces. And this is one of my favorite chairs, so when I look at this chair I know who designed it, you don’t have to put a name or a logo to know who made it. That’s something that we try to do. It’s difficult, but that’s our mantra, when we launch something, we don’t want to launch something that is similar to another brand. We want it to actually stand out as a design itself.

knu We want to do a footwear brand that you can find different styles that could match with your different outfits. A complete footwear brand. Right now we are working on another sneaker, it’s more like a flat, cup sole style shoe. Hopefully, we can launch that soon, we’re still doing some prototyping.

We expanded that now to derbies and boots, because you might not want to wear sneakers every day, sometimes you want to wear a different outfit. We now have two different models of derbies, Type 01 and 02, and boots also 01 and 02. These are all high quality shoes – everything is stitched down, it’s all sewed, we use very good quality leather from English and American tanneries, and the outsole is from Vibram. We tried to use as many premium materials as we could. Now we are working on a little bit more trashy, dressy kind of derbies. We’re going to add more models so that we can fit with different types of outfits for our customers.

knu For the D-Type 02, we used this magnetic buckle from a German company called Fidlock. They do this kind of buckle for sport, motorcycle helmets, and bags. They have very good buckles and awesome design. For the D-Type 02 for instance, it’s coming from the original design of the double monk strap, when you have two straps that close with a belt buckle. But then we changed it to something that is more convenient, easy to open and close, and that has a futuristic vibe to it, but also a 90s Prada, that kind of color palette with the black and red.

We started using this buckle for our caps as well, like the C-Type 01 has the buckle in the back. Since they are magnetic, you can just stick them to a metal surface. It’s a pretty handy, functional element.

knu There’s a lot of things that I could say, but first thing would be: you have to believe in what you’re doing, believe in your project. In the end, with this kind of product we’re not innovating the world. Let’s say you’re not going to Mars (laughs), have a limit of doing something new. And that means the execution is really important. You have to believe in your project, just go for it, and do it right. Probably, that’s the most important thing.

And the second thing for me is: you have to start small. Don’t try to make a big brand with a big identity. If you like something, then you create something very small, then you test it with your friends, your family, with the people around you, and then see how people react to what you just created. From there, you start iterating. It doesn’t have to be a brand in the beginning. When we started, we just made a shoe, without having any idea of design or branding. But over time we learned how to do it. Just start something small, and then test it out with the people around you. By doing that, you can really validate your idea, concept and design. It also helps you to see the gaps of your skills, where you need help and where you need to grow. Eventually, after testing things out for a couple of years, then you can decide something that’s more concrete.