Steadily Paced Meermin

Meermin may well sit in the vocabulary of shoe enthusiasts, however quite few knows its rich history. If I need to use one single phrase to describe the well known price killer from Spain, it is Steadily Paced.

Meermin was founded in 2001 by Pepe Albaladejo, the son of Jose Albaladejo, the latter is the emperor of Spanish shoemaking.

Why did they want to have another brand? This has to come back to the topic of the Spanish Shoemaking Emperor Family.

Back in 1990s, the most popular Spanish brand in the world is Yanko. Yanko invaded the US and smoothly penetrated in Japan as well. But in 2000, due to overly excessive volume capability and the unmatched market demand, Yanko went bankrupt.

Yanko was the birthchild of Albaladejo family.

After the bankruptcy of Yanko, Jose Albaladejo teamed with his sons to established two brands in no time, one was Meermin cofounded by Jose and Pepe Albaladejo, the other one is more famous today, Carmina.

Before the bankruptcy, Jose spent most energy in Japan market, so when Meermin was established, he asked his former customers whether interested or not. And his most important customer is Isetan.

Isetan not only said yes, but put the 2001 new brand Meermin aside John Lobb and Crockett & Jones and set the price to 500-600 USD, which is totally different from today’s price.

Guess what? Meermin was the yearly best seller!

Meermin is made in Shanghai China from the beginning, and the factory made military shoes. Meermin chose this factory for the same reason as its first order is for Spanish military and its factory in Mallorca cannot finish them intime, so Jose and Pepe partner with this Chinese shoe factory.

After the later 6 to 7 years, Meermin led a wonderful life because of the high profit from Japan market, then the sales declined. Meermin steered to direct sale method and opened a mono-brand boutique in Madrid.

Till then, Meermin still had not official website and no online sales at all. Mail order is the only way for people outside Madrid and Japan. Some customers even waited months. This situation gave Meermin confidence to expand globally.

Even knowing the demand is huge, Meermin’s pace was still steady.

In 2012, Meermin host the first trunk show in Stockholm, so many customers poured in, and the later trunk shows in Paris, London and New York all told the same story.

Even so great sales in different trunk shows, Meermin opened its second boutique in New York till 2018.

2019 saw Paris boutique.

Although Meermin made in China, but Asian customers got their shoes from Spain for many unnecessary costs. Finally in 2020, Meermin built Asian warehouse and planned to open its first Asian boutique.