Local leather only as co-operative launches its own athletic shoe
30/09/2015
Corrientes-based Utrasa, a co-operative formed as an employee buy-out in 2004 when footwear producer Gatic closed down, has now launched its first own-brand shoe. As part of a commitment to using only Argentinean raw materials, the uppers are of locally produced leather, while the sole is PVC.
Industry minister for the province of Corrientes, Ignacio Osella, was present at the launch and said of the shoe: “It’s really a fantastic product, especially in a market that is so competitive, so demanding and so hard to get into.” He said Utrasa was likely to distribute its own-brand footwear in the wider north-eastern region to begin with.
For her part, Utrasa’s president, Ana María Galarza, said at the time of the launch that the new leather shoe is the fruit of “11 years of sacrifice and hard work”. She added: “We’ve always worked for other companies, but making shoes under our own brand was always our dream.”
She paid tribute to the support Utrasa has received from the provincial government; the co-operative designed and made its latest product with the support of a special industrial development fund. Ms Galarza also said the Corrientes provincial government had been supportive of Utrasa’s earliest attempts to keep its people working. “Everything looked bleak,” she said, “but we had 27,000 pairs of canvas shoes and the provincial ministry for education bought them all to distribute among the children in local schools.”
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