Forbes: ‘Meet the millennial brothers who are putting Georgia (the country) on the sneaker map’

Forbes has published an article about Georgian designer brothers George and Shota Mikaia who design men’s and women’s sneakers.

The article says that despite the horrors of what the brothers witnessed during the war of Abkhazia, their home region, they are still inspired by Georgia’s beautiful landscape and rich traditions including shoemaking.

The brothers told Forbes their personal story as well as how they established their brand CROSTY.

With very limited resources coming straight from my and Shota’s personal salaries, we started to create prototypes of the collection. We created visual communications for the CROSTY brand, developed an e-commerce platform, and a foundation for the company’s strategy and vision. We knew our limitations and therefore started to look for investments. In early 2016, we met our Managing Partner Levan, who liked the idea and together with his friend they joined our company. At a later stage, we used bank financing,” said George Mikaia.

George said that shoemaking has a long history in Georgia and during Soviet times, there were many shoe factories, however after the collapse of the Soviet Union and difficult 90’s, everything was destroyed.

The industry is rebuilding from scratch. With hard work and persistence we managed to create the high caliber sneaker. Currently Georgia employs many hardworking and talented masters, however there is still a lot of work to be done. Mostly, Georgia lacks “know how” and technology, rather than masters. We want to tell the story of Georgian freedom, and “Made in Georgia” to spread the necessary message”, explains George.

Read the full story here.