A slice of France

The two factories in Izeaux and Fures are closed. All of the company’s activities are now united under one roof in Saint-Jean-de-Moirans.

A modern, environmentally friendly factory where operations are streamlined and information flow is facilitated. Paraboot opens a boutique in Tokyo’s famous Ginza district and one in Sapporo. The brand returns to Printemps and the Galeries Lafayette in Paris.

Without forgetting its origins, the model evolves with society. It transcends time, proudly embodying the brand’s values ​​across five continents.

Between makeovers and collaborations, the model has experienced an emotionally charged 70th anniversary.
Paraboot opens its second boutique in Japan in the city of Osaka, where it introduces a new concept.

Still based in Izeaux, Isère, Paraboot has become one of the last emblems of “Made in France” and “sewn shoes” in the footwear world.

Already present in the four corners of the world, with its stores opening in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1994, Tokyo (Japan) in 2001, and Brussels (Belgium) in 2003, Paraboot is now establishing its presence abroad.

With the arrival of Marc-Antoine in Production, Paraboot is in its fourth generation.

The collections now have a more urban feel, crafted according to the ancestral rules of shoemaking, using the finest materials. The positioning is high-end, rejecting the ostentatious aspect of luxury. Paraboot diversifies and creates a true women’s collection, which is no longer simply an offshoot of the men’s collection.

The first directly owned boutiques opened in Paris, Lyon, and Nice in 1987.

While negotiating with the Commercial Court, Michel Richard searched Italy for more efficient equipment. He tried to understand the methods of his most formidable Italian competitors. He eventually met and negotiated an agreement with “WP lavori in corso,” an Italian fashion clothing distributor.

Italian designers had decreed that men needed to change their appearance: out with the dark suit, shirt and tie, and thin-soled black loafers. In with the tweed jacket, velvet trousers, and turtleneck sweater. All they needed was a material shoe with a thick sole, and while they had everything they needed, they came looking for the Michael model from Paraboot.

The popularity of “the” Michael saved Paraboot from extinction.
This trend caught on quickly, orders poured in, and the workload was assured. The long-standing suppliers, spared during the bankruptcy filing, followed suit! Paraboot has been working with the same tanneries for several generations, suppliers who are, above all, friends, who share the same passion for the trade and mutual trust… All this makes the difference.

Aware that he had been a product and contact man, but not a management man, with little interest in profits or other financial ratios, Julien called on his son Michel in 1973, the graduate, who was working in a multinational, to streamline a company that had fallen into the trap of the thirty glorious years, of overly rapid expansion, rampant inflation, and easy credit. Because times had changed again and the first oil shocks had already taken their toll. Rigor was required, social and banking relations had to comply with strict standards, unions and bankers were no longer so affable. At the end of 1979, Julien gave his son Michel complete free rein. Michel, who for six years had been trying to reduce the company’s activity to only “profitable” markets, reduce personnel costs while improving productivity, generalize IT, streamline manufacturing programs, and reduce costs without increasing prices, dreamed of being able to redress the perilous imbalance in the balance sheet, which was entirely financed by the banks. But at the dawn of the 1980s, the small shoe manufacturer, which generated 45% of its revenue from exports, suffered the full brunt of the collapse of the dollar and the yen, and the loss of its largest customers. Those that remained struggled to pay their outstanding bills. After two years of great difficulty, Michel Richard filed for bankruptcy in late 1983, but the union and the commercial court believed in it. Continuation of operations was granted.

Although skiing was quickly abandoned, other sporting activities were taken up, which gave rise to new human adventures: in 1970, Gil Delamare and Colette Duval, the fiancés of the sky, were at the origin of special models for the French parachuting team, world champion. Then there was Paul-Emile Victor and his special Terre Adélie boots in 1971, Haroun Tazieff to study volcanoes… It is to André Turcat, pilot of the Concorde and the Airbus, that we owe a model that still equips the Mirage pilots. The worlds of motorcycling, horse riding, and ski touring were not left out. The Richard-Pontvert company manufactured all kinds of technical shoes and even created the Alviera ice skate factory in 1972. The company then had 650 employees.

Julien Richard had to find other outlets, wherever there was a need for technical, specialized footwear, and perhaps even in the growing sports and leisure sector.

The Galibier brand, now dethroned by Paraboot for utility footwear, became the embodiment of the first ski, après-ski, and mountaineering boots.

Julien discovered a new world filled with strong and sincere personalities. He worked with the greatest mountaineers: Herzog, Mazeaud, Terray, Desmaison, Pollet-Villard, Royal Robbins, and more.

He focused production on mountaineering, climbing, and rock climbing, and abandoned skiing, which had become fashionable and mainstream. In just a few years, the Galibier brand became the leader in technical footwear in France and abroad. Richard-Pontvert expanded its exports to Japan, the USA, and Italy, wherever there were climbers. It is for Galibier that the factories are running and no longer for Paraboot.

Julien, Rémy Richard’s son, joined the company in 1937 at the age of 20. The Phoney War, then the Occupation, obviously slowed production due to a lack of raw materials. A return to wooden soles and expedients was made. The workers alternated between workshop work and cultivating fields rented for the occasion, the proceeds of which were redistributed.

The liberation, and the thirst to rediscover everything that had been lacking, obviously revived the factories, but conditions had changed. The war led to the development of chemistry. Synthetic materials appeared, but also glues that would revolutionize assembly methods.

New shoe factories were established, which immediately adopted plastic soles, simply glued to lighter uppers, making them simpler to manufacture, with less skilled workers. These “disposable” and cheaper shoes were better suited to a clientele who wanted to consume after having missed so much.

The old traditional manufacturing centers were declining, incapable of reform. The Richard-Pontvert company then had around fifty workers.

Julien, now alone at the helm, faced a dilemma: change his manufacturing methods and the company’s ethos to adopt the “collage” approach everyone else was pursuing, or persevere by better targeting his customers.

More passionate about nature, hunting, and fishing than the city and trade shows, Julien Richard refocused manufacturing on shoes with large soles and thick leather. Still Goodyear or Norwegian welted, they were intended for professionals who worked on their feet: farmers, horse dealers, lumberjacks, shepherds, postal workers, laborers, and artisans, who needed to be able to rely on sturdy yet comfortable shoes.

Alongside technical boots, he created a few lighter models for architects, surveyors, and veterinarians. This is how the “Morzine” model was born. In 1945, it was the turn of the legendary “Michaël.”

A networking and public relations man, he runs the family business based on the people he meets and his instincts. He has chosen a rustic product. He therefore abandons the urban clientele that his competitors focus on.

Rémy Richard registered the name Paraboot in 1927, a combination of “Para,” a port in the Amazon, from which latex was exported, and “boot,” the curious shoe that Rémy Richard discovered in the United States.

So it had nothing to do with any brand created for Anglo-Saxon marketing trends. The Paraboot technique and style were born!

Yet Rémy continued to manufacture, under the Extra brand, more refined shoes with thin leather soles, for the softest carpets. A strange duality that endures.

Rémy will remain a singular character, self-taught, full of common sense, trained in no school except that of life. He always had an eye open to the outside world, and, despite his very modest origins, did not hesitate to rent the Lido to present his collections, to have his photograph taken at Harcourt, to wear the suit for his latest invention, a little eccentric if ever there was one and without a future. He went so far as to invite the President of the Republic for a demonstration of the “floating man” crossing the Seine, dressed in a rubber suit.

Paris, London, Amsterdam… Rémy Richard had a taste for travel and trade shows, where he collected medals.

In 1926, without speaking a word of English, he took a boat to the United States. Always attentive to innovations, he discovered, on the feet of Americans, rubber boots, and especially the virtues of this brand-new material, indiscriminately called latex, rubber, or rubber. It was a revelation for him. He brought this material and its expertise back to Tullins Fures, a small town near Izeaux, where he had just purchased a new factory building.

Then began the manufacture of waterproof boots and ankle boots using latex sheets laid by hand on wooden shoe trees and vulcanized in ovens.

Rémy Richard was not, however, an innovator. In France, in 1853, Englishman Hiram Hutchinson had already established a rubber boot factory, the forerunner of the Aigle group. He had bought the patents of Charles Junior Goodyear, the inventor of vulcanization, and those of his father, Charles Goodyear, who a few years earlier had developed the sewing machine that bears his name.

However, eleven years before Vitale Bramani, the creator of the “Vibram” brand, Rémy Richard invented lugged soles for mountain boots. History loves to cross destinies!

Then he had the idea of ​​using this rubber to replace wooden soles, which were so cheap but so uncomfortable, and… which wore out so quickly.
Then he lacked the technology; as far as he knew, the leather uppers of shoes (shoe uppers) were either nailed to the wooden soles or sewn to the leather soles. Impossible with rubber soles.

He therefore developed a system for a thin rubber sole, which could be sewn to the upper and then glued with liquid latex to a thicker rubber sole.
Then the problem of vulcanization remained; an old walnut oil press (another local specialty) would allow the soles to be baked, and thus vulcanized, in steel molds, similar to a common waffle iron.

From then on, all work shoes had rubber soles, a distinctive feature of the Richard Pontvert workshops.

Through another agent, who took him under his wing, Rémy met Juliette Pontvert, daughter of a wealthy notary from Sarthe. He married her in 1910 and founded the Richard-Pontvert company. The groom contributed his expertise, designs, and equipment; the bride, her dowry as capital. Rémy launched the “Chaussures Extra” brand and a collection of fine, high-end shoes.

Discharged from the front where he was wounded, he was tasked with repairing shoes, harnesses, and other army equipment.

After the war, he resumed his business with some success. He rented and then bought a warehouse near Les Halles de Paris to be closer to his customers, including department stores and also small boutiques frequented by the butchers, fishmongers, and greengrocers of Les Halles. In 1920, he bought his first factory in Izeaux, to better master the manufacturing of both sophisticated shoes with leather soles and work boots with wooden or leather soles but studded. For the latter, he registered the Galibier trademark in 1922.

The end of the 19th century. It all began in Izeaux, a small village at the foot of the Alps. Rémy-Alexis Richard, born in 1878 into a family of modest farmers, became a cutter at Chevron, one of the 20 shoe workshops in the Isère village. These workshops received orders from “city” contractors, purchased the leather, cut it, and had the pieces assembled at home by farming families in the surrounding hills, before attaching them (nailed or sewn) to wooden or leather soles depending on the desired product.

Rémy Richard quickly realized that these city contractors were earning more money than his own boss, and he decided to take a chance; he went to Paris with the designs of his own models to sell them as a “factory agent.”

And it worked! He had his first shoes made, which he sold to the “big” clients in Paris, by the Izeaux workshops, including the one he had just left. In 1908, he began hiring his own staff.