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A small shoe shop in Valencia was where Cuquito, a Spanish brand specialising in baby footwear, took its first steps. Mr. Amadeo Folqués Oltra, owner and creator of this family business, along with his children, entered a sector that was until then little exploited. Today, it is on the verge of its 50th anniversary and Amadeo Folqués Diago, a third generation member of the family, is at the helm of this business that is changing with the times without leaving behind its core philosophy: care for babies’ feet and make them fashionable.

Its Sales Manager, Juan Carlos Rocher, gives us the lowdown on the history of this company, which is, most definitely, “cute-quito”.

How did Cuquito start out?
The owners and creators of the company began designing three or four pairs of models for babies in order to sell them in their shoe shop in Valencia and they realised that their customers were actually buying them. They also noticed that this was a market with great potential and that the shoes could also begin to be marketed beyond the shoe shop. And so Cuquito was born in the 1960s.
They opted for baby footwear because it is produced differently to all other types of shoes. These shoes have a shape, but you don’t have to assemble them, they don’t have a sole and they are made inside out and then turned the right way round. Perhaps that was why they chose this type of footwear: it was simpler.
In time, Cuquito grew and developed into a family business, one which has been passed down from generation to generation. Nowadays, the business is under the management of Amadeo Folqués Diago, a third generation member of the family.

Is it complicated to manufacture children’s shoes?
I suppose so, but since they are very small, they have to be handcrafted. The business is located in Valencia, a region which does not have the same tradition for footwear that Alicante has, and therefore, we had to train our workers from scratch. The workers have been developing their trade over many years, many of them have spent most of their lives with us.
The difficult part is setting up a factory, employing people and training them. This process is very slow. We are about to celebrate our 50th anniversary and we have become what we are today because we worked with people who have been with us for a long period and who can now train new generations. The shoes being as small as they are, little of the work can be done using machinery and we have to continue to work manually. We work the leather pieces one by one to check that everything is as it should be. It’s not so much complicated as it is arduous.

Children’s fashion safety regulations, I imagine, are stricter in terms of footwear.
Safety regulations are derived from toy regulations and these regulations have adapted to garments and footwear. For example, nowadays leather can only be tanned with a small amount of chrome, the smaller elements can not be separated from the shoe, they must be sewn on…
Every time our design team makes a shoe, they do the necessary tests to check that the elements don’t come loose, that the leather chosen is legitimate, and that the materials are appropriate. We must not forget that are target is babies and everything that we make has to comply with the regulations established. For several years there has been a set of regulations known as REACH, which even stipulate the type and properties of dyes; shoe buckles must not contain nickel, for example.
Cuquito has its own design team comprising 3 members of staff, who as well as preparing the collections also act as our R+D department. Along with purely creative designing, each new launch requires them to know all the new materials, as well as if they are compliant with the regulations and if providers have the necessary certification.

Cuquito’s philosophy is…
Dress babies’ feet. We want babies to dress like adults. That’s it, our maxim is to care for babies’ feet and therefore, we don’t use harmful materials. Every time we create a new design, everything is checked, but most of all we make sure that the materials adapt to the baby’s foot.
We dress the baby’s foot with shoes made with natural material in order that they develop naturally too. Their feet continue to develop for more than two years, therefore we look for very soft shoes that allow the shoe to adapt to the foot and not the other way around.

How do you maintain comfort and quality?
When we make shoes, we are always striving to make them natural and then we choose cotton, make sure that there is no interior stitching and that the shoes are soft and easy to wear. In addition, we try to make them fashionable and comfortable, allowing the foot to develop naturally.