The famous Swedish shoe store Skoaktiebolaget will be closing their brick and mortar shop at the end of February, after being an important player in Scandinavia and internationally ever since they opened a decade ago. Now they will be an online store only with a much more limited offering. This will mean a big sale starts in store on Tuesday January 25 to clear a lot of the stock.
Shoegazing and Skoaktiebolaget have sort of grown up side by side. They opened up their first store in Stockholm one week after I started the original Swedish edition of the Shoegazing blog, and the fourth article ever was about the store opening (found here, only in Swedish and with some images not working). It was started by Patrik Löf, Daniel Tung and Adam Kruse (who sadly passed away couple of years later). In the beginning they offered three brands, Carmina (priced at approximately €340 at the time), Edward Green (at €700) and Gaziano & Girling (at €740, so clearly a huge price hike since then for these British brands). Pretty quick Skoaktiebolaget gained international attention, and their online store became just as important as the brick and mortar shop in Stockholm. Here in Sweden, I believe both Shoegazing and Skoaktiebolaget have played big roles, in different ways, for the large interest in classic shoes we’ve seen here, even if the peak has passed by now.
During the opening day in October 2012, a small shop on Humlegårdsgatan in Stockholm, with a young Patrik Löf helping a customer.
Here’s a photo of the second, much larger premises which Skoaktiebolaget housed in since 2016. Picture: Skoaktiebolaget
A lot has happened for the store the passed decade. Many new brands have been introduced, many brands have stopped being part of their offerings, loads of trunk shows have been hosted, many other events, and a few years ago they moved to much larger, nicer premises. For various reasons, Skoaktiebolaget’s sales dropped a bit since 2019, and of course when Covid hit it didn’t make things easier. Now, they have decided to close the brick and mortar store, this on February 19, and revamp the business to being an online store only, even if they’ll open up a showroom later this spring at Nybrokajen in Stockholm. Focus will be more on MTO, Group-MTO and limited models. They will at least initially keep all the brands they have now, apart from Loake, but the selection will be more specialised.
Boot from Skoaktiebolaget’s own brand Löf & Tung.
This means that they will look at get rid of a bunch of stock, hence, a huge sale will end this era of the shop. This will start now on Tuesday January 25, and as I understand it you’ll find stuff from all their brands: Loake, Löf & Tung, Enzo Bonafé, Saint Crispin’s and John Lobb Paris. Expect very good chances of making a bargain, so don’t miss visit the physical store those of you who can on Tuesday. In Stockholm we now have lost two of the best shoe stores in less than a year, with Grafford and now Skoaktiebolaget. Surely a sad development.
I think many brick and mortar stores for quality me’s clothing (especially when they specialize in selling only a limited range of products) are becoming difficult to sustain given high fixed costs and probably low sales given the geographical limitations (buying power and interest in the area where the store is located) versus being able to reach a much larger market internationally through an online store. Of course if the store is in London or Beverley Hills it may be a different story but even then you probably need substantial backing to weather things like Covid. I wonder what will happen to Cavour? They may, and I hope do, survive as their offerings are much wider than Skoaktibolaget.
Skoaktiebolaget is one of the best retailers of quality footwear ever. I’ve stopped checking their site as often as the range of makers changed, and I did think that adding Loake was a strange decision.
I hope this isn’t impacting their lives too much, and I wish them every success in the future.
Nezar: Yes it’s likely that this sphere, and many others, will have a difficulty to stay around as before, and that our city centres will look very different in 10 years time. I’m for one will sure miss stores like these. I’ve always mixed how I buy shoes, online stores, in brick & mortar shops, directly from the maker in person or online, etc. But without store fronts like these, awesome display windows for these fine products out to a broader public that would never Google “welted shoes” or such disappears.
Ross: They run the Loake flagship store in Stockholm for the Scandinavian agent, so it was a logical step to bring that in, but was mainly for the domestic market where Loake is big. The founders of Skoaktiebolaget run a successful IT company which has always been their main thing, so they sure will survive, mainly for some employees things change. We sure hope the online focus will thrive!
Totally agree Jesper. Always great to see beautiful shoes on display.