Totally trendy, with a nice lightweight, yet voluminous sole and an outsole finished with a lot of nubs. If you're a young father watch out for any Duplo blocks on the floor while wearing them. Before you know it, you're half a metre taller...”

When I saw the design, the zigzag looked like waves of the sea and the smaller ridges next to it looked like a jetty. With a bit of imagination, of course, lol. So, to shake things up a bit, we put a pair of flip-flops and a pair of swim trunks on that little jetty in the design. The owner of these things is currently swimming in the waves. Without wearing swim trunks, because they are lying on the jetty. Fortunately, you can only see his head sticking out of the waves. Or, wait a minute! Is that even his head? I'll leave that open for now. In any case, this whole scene shows pretty well what kind of shoe this is: A nice and airy summer shoe for sun, sea, beach, boulevards, or just at home in the garden."

When you read it aloud it sounds like “On the floor is van Bommel”. We also had a pizza sole saying “The Flooris Pizza”, and a sole with a play on words around a selfish fish that we called “shoefish”. And now we have this squid on socks. Above all, this sole gives you an insight into how our designers are desperately looking for bad puns in between designing. (My favourite pun from my own repertoire came to me when I was sitting in my regular spot on the stands watching my favourite football team Willem II play. In front of us was a noisy group of friends that we’d never seen before. A boy named “Siegfried” stood out. After the half-time break, he came back with a bag of fries and I nudged my friend sitting next to me saying: “Seek-Fries?” True story!)”

My 'Joke Tourette's' was playing up again, so I just had to put it there. A few months later, I took another look at the sole for the first time again. Now, I’m suddenly not so sure about it (I can’t insert any emoji’s, but that little monkey covering his eyes with his hands would work well here). The joke is perhaps a little too much on the level of 'throwing your compass into the ceiling in maths class’. It is, erm... a bit pubescent and of course, I’m a reasonable adult. But there's no way back now. I'm definitely not going to tell anyone what the joke is about and it's pretty well hidden, so the angry reactions (and people get angry very easily...) won't be too bad. At least I hope so.”

The first is very simple: this way, he has one pair less in stock. The second reason is much more important though. Since he’s wearing the shoes, customers in the shop suddenly realize that they actually look quite nice when worn. So, he’ll sell the shoes anyway. There’s always a huge difference between seeing a shoe on its own and seeing it worn. This was also the case with this shoe. I was excited when I saw the first prototype, but when a colleague wore the test sneaker, I was instantly obsessed. Magic! Best sneaker in ages: modern, different, and with its very own look. We immediately showcased the whole line as our new key style for summer 2024. We use one of the colour combos in our ads and the other versions will get a special spot in our online shop. Soooo, I'd say, try them on for yourself!"