PRABOS PLUS: mine-resistant boots

It's like cutting out Christmas candy, but the mold is a little bigger. The woman puts it on a sheet of dark grey leather, and when she finds the perfect position, she starts the press, which cuts out the piece. "No automated machine can do this. Leather is a natural material, every piece is different, there can be blemishes. It takes a human eye and experience," explains Jaroslav Palát, one of the two main shareholders of Prabos, which makes military, work and leisure footwear in Slavičín in the Zlín region. With an annual production of around 500,000 pairs, it is the largest shoe manufacturer in the Czech Republic. This production has a century-long tradition in the local factory. However, the history of working with leather goes back even further, to 1860, so there is certainly no lack of experience.

Thanks to it, Prabos today provides footwear for European armies, employees of a number of key Czech companies such as Škoda Auto, ČEZ or Forest of the CZ, and is gradually growing on the leisure footwear market. Its turnover grew by 60 percent from 2015 to last year to nearly CZK 400 million. In 2018, it successfully went public. Of course, there were not only good years, there were also worse ones, and the current owners even pulled Prabos out of the bottom twice.

Bata's advisor

It all started sometime in 1860, when the Piveček family established a tannery on the site of the present factory, which they expanded in the 1920s to include shoe production. "Bata tried to attract Jan Pivečka for leather processing, because Pivečka was an expert par excellence in this field. In the end, he helped Bata to start a tannery in Otrokovice," says Jaroslav Palát. After the Second World War, the state included the factory in the package of nationalised companies and it was eventually placed under the Svit company with its headquarters in today's Zlín, then Gottwaldov.

In the 1990s, restitution came, but the descendant of the former founders received only a small part of the shares in the newly established joint-stock company, which was still a subsidiary of Svit. The latter went bankrupt in 1999. The current owners eventually bought Prabos. "I was more of an accidental investor, I was involved in bankruptcies and claims. This opportunity seemed good to me. Juraj Vozár and I knew each other, I was more of a financier, he was a shoe expert, so we got together and got the company back on its feet," says Palát. Prabos was then burdened with a number of liabilities for the parent company's loans, which were gradually resolved, the company was cleaned up, and it won large orders, including supplies for foreign armies.

Second time in the same river

It was 2008 when the Czech owners were approached by a Polish competitor, Protektor, who wanted to create a Central European giant in the production of work and military footwear through financing via the Warsaw Stock Exchange. "They offered an interesting price, a colleague and a management position in the future holding. We agreed. But Juraj had a different idea of how business should be run, and after about a year he broke up with the Poles," Jaroslav Palát recalls. According to him, the new owners brought the company "off the ground" and in 2012 offered it back to the Czech couple for a symbolic price, including, of course, the assumption of the guarantees they had for Prabos' liabilities.

Palát says today that under normal circumstances he would never have gone for it. "Here it was a second before the insolvency. The warehouses were packed with unsaleable shoes and the order book was empty. On the other side, six months' worth of utility bills," he says. But he trusted his partner, who mapped out the state of the business, and especially his wife. "She made the decision with a simple question: How many people work there? When she heard two hundred, she replied: Well, we have to take a chance," says Jaroslav Palát. Fortunately, he had assets that he could guarantee to the bank, but that meant mortgaging almost all of his real estate.

The first three years were purgatory, according to him. "Fortunately, people believed both me and my colleague that we didn't come to gnaw on the remains of bones," Palat says. And his recipe for bringing the company out of the bottom? Work hard, don't be afraid, take risks. At Prabos, they're really not afraid of anything. The proof is the shoe with the extremely high sole and the ripped heel on the cabinet in the meeting room. "This is a tested piece of mine-resistant footwear we made for the Indian army," explains Palát.

Thanks to its exceptional know-how, the Czech shoe company has a chance even in the era of overwhelming Asian competition. It can win on price if it makes simple shoes in million-dollar series. But when it has to deliver a sophisticated product demanding production process and materials, it is comparable in price. "They are not afraid to cheat. They'll send out a super sample, but then the quality drops because they're trying to see how far they can go to make a profit to make up for the initial loss," explains the co-owner of Prabos. For the same reasons, few Chinese manufacturers are licensed to use the Goretex membrane that Prabos has.

A new seamstress? Sometimes that miracle happens.

Measured by financial volume, today half of the company's production consists of military footwear, the sales of which depend on success in public procurement at home and abroad.
Most recently, Prabos was successful in a competition for the Swiss army. "The Swiss have one huge advantage: they are completely transparent. They have no local manufacturer, so you have to meet the quality, then the price decides. In Germany, the German manufacturer always wins, but sometimes they give part of the contract to someone else so it doesn't completely roar. In France, we don't even go to tenders anymore, you don't have a chance there if you're not a French company," explains Palat. In his opinion, the Baltic States are an interesting market. Sometimes Prabos scores by making small batches that are not even worth sampling for giants like Lowa or Meinl. For example, he won an order from the Netherlands, where he shoed pilots.
One third of the production is work boots, the rest is leisure footwear, which has enriched the range in recent years. However, this decision has worked well. "In the military segment we are no longer able to produce much more, in work boots we are trying to eliminate simple models and increase the added value, but the growth, albeit gradual, is now mainly brought by leisure shoes," calculates Palat.
Prabos relies on Italian design. Specialised studios there know the trends, the development of materials and are able to supply complete production documentation. The factory in Slavičín is responsible for 90% of the production; if it is not able to keep up, partner companies in Slovakia help out. The company also has a branch in Ukraine, but its development would be too big a staff burden for the time being, so production there is minimal.
The main plan for the future is gradual automation. "It is impossible to get a new sewing machine. Sometimes a small miracle happens when someone comes in and wants to do the job, but we have to teach them. There isn't even such an apprenticeship in the Czech Republic anymore," says Palát. Increasingly, machines will have to step in. The company is trying to go step by step, so that the machines will gradually free the employees from the routine of simple operations and they can devote themselves to better-paid work. No automated line can yet make the sophisticated shoes they make at Prabos. "The idea of putting in material at the beginning and having the shoe fall out at the end is unrealistic. A hundred people really have to touch the shoe with their hands. If it could be done differently, Bata would have done it long ago in those 30 years," says Jaroslav Palát.

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