A Brief History of Ecco Shoes, One of the World’s Best-Known Brands

Ecco was founded by Karl Toosbuy, a man with a real dream. His dream was to start his own business, running a shoe factory. He had been trained to make shoes from being very young and worked his way up to the top. By the time he was in his 30s, he was the manager of a shoe factory in Denmark’s capital of Copenhagen. However, although he managed it, it wasn’t his business.

By this time, Toosbuy was a married man with a family. Together, they decided that he needed to follow his dream. Hence, he gave up his job, sold his home and uprooted his family to the west coast of Denmark, to a town called Bredebro. This is just to the north of the border with Germany. The family, being Karl, his wife Birte and their 5-year old little girl Hanni, had to rent a small house where they lived while taking over a small community factory. This factory was built specifically to give people in the local area jobs, as the two relied heavily on agriculture.

Indeed, the entire area is a vast expanse of farmers’ fields. However, The Toosbuys had decided to make a go of their factory and that is what they did. At first, they only made Venus shoes, which were designed for women. They worked hard and saw little returns. The hours were grueling, the problems they faced were enough to bring anyone down and they wondered for a long time whether they had made a massive mistake.

However, towards the end of the 70s, Ejnar Truelson, one of their designers, came up with the JOKE line, which was truly revolutionary. Ejnar designed a range of other shoes and the design of some of these are still being used to do. To further grown his business, Toosbuy invested in a direct injection machine, which meant all the shoes were made with high-tech production. He knew that the machine would be a success and bought another one. It is a good thing he did so, because the ECCO shoes were a huge success and continue to be so to this day. So why not shop our collection of ECCO shoes?