Out of the shoe box – into the wild
The Netherlands’ oldest – and last remaining – shoe manufacturer, Floris van Bommel, operates on a rather unusual formula: humor, a sense of adventure, and a feel for chance
Floris van Bommel sits at his desk, a vast pinboard of images behind him. Many of them show wild landscapes, remote places, a sky over Scotland, a dusty road somewhere in Georgia. Only a few show the product van Bommel actually sells: shoes. Together with his brothers Reynier and Pepijn, Floris runs the last shoe factory in the Netherlands, now in its ninth generation – one that, by now, even bears his name. And while other creative directors might surround themselves with mood boards full of materials, lasts, and soles, Floris van Bommel seems to collect something else entirely: surprises.
“We’re kind of famous for showing no shoes, or the wrong ones,” the 51-year-old says. “I remember a fashion fair in Berlin where we had this gigantic photo wall: 25 by 5 meters, backlit. One of our German clients came up to me and said, ‘No shoes! Again no shoes!’” He laughs. Twice a year, the creative director sets off with a small photography team and a handful of proto types from the latest collection, heading somewhere far away to produce the campaign in a kind of guerrilla style: shoes in a canoe in Uganda, in the desert sands of Oman, in front of a waterfall in Tibet—but what you mostly see are breathtaking landscapes. And in the middle of it all: Floris, in a suit and tie. The feet play a supporting role at most – or are nowhere to be seen at all.
“That mostly has to do with the fact that, at that point, the shoes don’t even exist in my size yet,” the model admits. The collection is often not fully produced when the images are shot, colors still undecided. So they show what they have. Or, sometimes, almost nothing at all. But they do it as spectacularly as possible, even if it requires patience. The team waits for the perfect light, for a photogenic situation, for that one special moment that can’t be planned. Sometimes nothing happens for days. “And then, all of a sudden, you’re standing in the steppe in Turkmenistan and ten wild horses run through the frame. Production value: a million,” he says. It’s a way of working that has more to do with intuition and a sense of adventure than with logic or control.
It’s a kind of risk only a family business can take. Because they know each other, trust each other, and understand (better than any market research) what the right move should be. In 2005, Floris van Bommel was among the first traditional shoe brands to introduce sneakers – brightly colored ones, at that. Retail partners were alarmed; something like that would never sell. The van Bommel family doubled down, producing a campaign video that follows a young Floris through a chaotic day in Amsterdam, ending with him throwing up into a canal. The neon-green sneaker – visible, at least – sold out almost instantly. Today, sneakers account for fifty percent of the Floris van Bommel portfolio.
That fearlessness, it seems, was instilled early on. Their father Frans, the eighth generation, always encouraged his sons to think, quite literally, “out of the shoe box.” In a video on the brand’s website, Floris and his father are sitting in a car, driving past a digital billboard on a tall pole along Amsterdam’s ring road. Floris nudges his father to look up: “Reclame op een paal (hihi),” it reads in oversized scribble, roughly translating to “Advertising on a pole (hehe).” Beneath it: the Floris van Bommel logo. “Quite Dada,” the son seems to think. “Quite Gaga,” the father. Even if, in his eyes, this moment might not mark the pinnacle of the van Bommel advertising history, there is something deeply touching in how proud he is of his son’s irreverent imagination. It is, after all, precisely this spirit that keeps the company from getting stuck in tradition – and instead allows it to stride, with a wink, into the next generation.