About Us

How the Juuris were born

    Our (later only my) story started 5 years ago, when I started thinking more about how to give healthy shoes to my second son. Of course, I also wanted to give healthy shoes to my first son, but I thought that if I had bought him expensive leather shoes intended for children, I couldn't have done anything wrong. More and more often, however, I started to come across barefoot shoes, especially at my enlightened friend. And so I started to look for as much information as possible about them because I just don't fall for some news. :-). I bought barefoot shoes for my son and myself. I haven't worn other shoes since. Oh, I once put on sandals that were had two-inch high heels and spent a few hours in them. At night, my feet really hurt in bed and I couldn't figure out why. Only then I realized that it would probably be my super sandals. I also attribute my cure for low back pain to barefoot.

    Gradually, I started to invent and sew all kinds of slippers for children and myself, of course, the Huaraches. I fell in love with them completely and spent years in them, I even had attempts to run in them - as otherwise I'm a non-runner, but I needed to try it after reading the book Born to run. We spent our years in a cottage near Banská Štiavnica, so on these stony sidewalks my legs were massively massaged in them.
The issue of my feet kept me going, so I took a course in reflexology, where everything fit together beautifully and confirmed in me to wear barefoot, or not to wear shoes even more.
    The Huaraches were great, but they seemed definitely sporty and little variable. To replace that lace would be really difficult, and with two - later three small boys, I didn't even get to it. This led me to make loops on my sandals, so I was able to change the lace according to the outfit calmly and even daily. Inventing different ties and using different components was also great. I could use my favorite buttons. I also tried different materials for laces and the best ones were the hardest - sewn viscose laces where we made lace ends to make threading even easier. We also tried different materials for the loops and insole, until we finally decided on the best that we used for our hands and feet. :-)
    How did the name come about? The whole barefooting came to me as a return to our roots, when women, men and children went barefoot. Yes, often because they didn't have money to buy shoes, but often also because they simply knew what was natural and good for them. I also remember my still living 99-year-old grandmother who went barefoot in the summer, and I, as a child, admired her and didn't understand how she could walk barefoot because it had to sting and hurt her. :-) So I got to the roots, but the name “roots” sounded a little hard to me. But the word roots is juuri in Finnish. A beautiful word and it also evokes the Slovak hero Jurko.

    I wrote at the beginning that this was my story first. Yes, I got my husband into it gradually. Both into barefooting and barefoot production. Fortunately, he supported me and always placed my ideas from the heights of my imagination back to the ground, into reality, where they had a chance to take on a real form, for which I am grateful. In addition, he is an IT technician and helps me with technical matters, so we are a great team.