Floris: “In 1995, we decided to sell a small line of fashionable shoes not under the brand name ‘Van Bommel’ but under the new name ‘Floris van Bommel’. For this new brand name, my father needed a new logo. As a 20-year-old student, I still came home every weekend to recover from a week of ‘strenuous studying’. During one of those weekends, sometime in late 1995, my father shoved a blank sheet of paper and some markers into my hand. He wanted me to write my name on it a few times. Preferably as graphically pleasing as possible. I was tired and I had a lot of other things on my mind that are important for a 20-year-old. Reluctantly, I sat down at the kitchen table to do it. After five minutes, my father thought it was enough. He wanted to take the sheets to the factory after the weekend and pick the best one. That kitchen table doodle ended up being used as the ‘Floris van Bommel’ logo for 15 years. Up until 2006, we always used this logo in combination with the much better-known Van Bommel logo. In the autumn of 2006, we decided that Floris van Bommel could now manage on its own and the Van Bommel logo disappeared from our communication. In 2010, we switched to the block-letter logo that we still use today. The handwritten logo was hard to read and therefore difficult to use for our exports.”

(Image above: Shoe boxes with the first Floris van Bommel logo.)