Your expert on shoes and shoe care
Few in the world know quality shoes and shoe and clothing care better than us at Skolyx. We make sure that you get world class products at hard-to-beat prices.
ABOUT SKOLYX - MENU (click to go directly to the respective topic):
- Skolyx - Our philosophy and aims
MORE ABOUT SKOLYX - OUR FIVE KEY AREAS:
- Knowledge
- Affordability
- Sustainability
- Service
- Integrity
OTHER:
- Company information
- Contact
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SKOLYX - OUR PHILOSOPHY AND AIMS
At Skolyx we offer a wide range of shoes, high quality shoe care products, clothing care products and accessories and combine this with fast and personal service, fast and low-rate shipping and low prices. We who work at Skolyx are considered to be some of the foremost experts in the world on shoes and shoe care, and are involved in some of the most acclaimed events in the world on quality shoes, for example the world championships in shoemaking, shoe shining and shoe patina.
We who run the company. From the left: Skolyx founder Emil Jansson, shoe expert Jesper Ingevaldsson, creator and customer specialist Lisa Håglund.
Our ambition is that it should be easy for everyone to take care of their shoes and clothes so that they last longer, good for both your wallet and the environment. The shoes, shoe trees and other products we sell are of high quality intended to last for a long time.
We opened our online store in 2012 and have since then expanded our range continuously and will continue to do so. An important part of this have always been our customers views and wishes, for example several products have been included in our range after suggestions from our customers. We've had over 125 000 customers from around the world since the start, and today we have the largest selection of welted shoes and high quality shoe and clothing care products in the Nordic region.
In terms of service, we have chosen to focus fully on delivering fast and qualitative answers via e-mail where you as a customer quickly and easily can get in touch with us and where we devote resources to respond to you as quickly as possible. If you don’t feel that customer service via digital channels are enough you are of course welcome to e-mail us and ask for a call, and we’ll give you a ring.
If you, as a customer, think we are missing something or have any other suggestions or thoughts, please feel free to email us at ktj@skolyx.se. We are open to all kinds of tips and are constantly reviewing our range. The above combined with a love for shoes and a desire to provide really good service to our customers, we hope and believe will make Skolyx the obvious choice for you when you are going to buy products for your shoes and wardrobe.
MORE ABOUT SKOLYX - OUR FIVE KEY AREAS
Knowledge
We can proudly and without exaggeration say that there are few people in the world who know quality shoes and shoe and clothing care better than us. The result of that knowledge is that you, our customers, get world-class products at the best possible price - and also benefit from our knowledge in guides etc. on the site or when you contact us with questions.
We who run Skolyx are extreme shoe nerds, and together we've spent many decades learning everything we can about shoes. On the side, one of us runs one of the world's largest blogs on quality footwear, Shoegazing, and also organise some of the most renowned events in the world on quality footwear, such as the world championships of shoemaking, shoe shining and shoe patina. To love good shoes and clothes and get to work with this all days is a privilege. Of course we also wear our shoes and use our products daily.
At Skolyx we work very closely with our manufacturers when developing the products we sell, both our own products and the majority of our brands. One example is our finest Goodyear welted shoes from TLB Mallorca, we were there with our knowledge and together with the factory developed the top range Artista, which completely redrew the map for what level of shoes you can get at that price level and which took the quality shoe world by storm. We have stood with Saphir in their lab in France and tested new shoe care products, we got our Portuguese sneaker manufacturer to buy leather midsoles and leather heel stiffeners in a quality that hardly any sneaker factories use, we got our hanger factory to improve the lacquer on our high gloss hangers, and so on. We're working on details that many of our competitors don't even know about, in order to offer products that maintain the level of quality we know they can.
Affordability
Skolyx in 2012 to sell cedar shoe trees, a type of product that was hard to find on the Swedish market. We were in contact with lots of different factories, testing different variants, comparing and evaluating, before we found a supplier that held a high quality but still at a good price. Skolyx has followed the same approach ever since.
When you buy something from us, the aim is that you can't get a better product at that price anywhere in the world. More often than not, we exceed it, in many cases offering the best bang-for-the-buck you can get. Today we have almost 1,000 different products in our range, and over the years we've shipped orders to over 65,000 customers around the world. Based on the feedback we receive, our customers think we're succeeding in our goal - feel free to check out the customer reviews of many of our products on the website for yourself. Also worth noting, for those of you outside EU, we deduct the high Swedish VAT of 25% on all orders.
It's not that surprising that we can keep prices this affordable, really. As we write above, we have a knowledge of quality shoes and shoe and clothing care that few in the world can match, we are very meticulous in all product development and sourcing, and we work directly with the manufacturers, in the same manner as any Direct to consumer-brand would do.
We have a lean organisation with a very high level of expertise "in-house" and without costly physical stores we can maintain a price level that few or no one can match. When developing shoe brushes, we only choose hair from the horse's tail, as we know it is of the highest quality and does not break as easily as hair from the mane. The factory in Italy that makes our socks had to test several different blends of wool, elastane and nylon before we found the mix with the best durability and that kept the fit the best. And so on.
Sustainability
Our ambition is to make it easy for everyone to take care of their shoes and clothes so that they last longer, which is good for your wallet and for the environment. And the shoes, shoe trees and other products we sell are of high quality and meant to last for a long time.
It's not just about, for example, making shoes out of durable full grain calf leather that can be cared for and made beautiful again, but also about choosing construction methods that allow shoes to be resoled and easily repaired, this goes for our Goodyear welted shoes, Blake stitched loafers as well as sidewall stitched sneakers. The same thing with our belts, which are sewn from two sturdy pieces of proper leather, and when they become worn around the buckle, as is often the case with belts, they can easily be sewn back together and last for a long time. Or our socks, which are made mostly out of wool for its great properties, but reinforced with nylon and and elastane to last and maintain a good fit (socks with holes or that just slide down tend to get thrown away). To name a few examples.
But sustainability is of course about more than just the products themselves and what they are used for. It's about a company's whole operations. We at Skolyx cant' be all pleased here, like most of the world we have a lot of work to do in this area. But ever since we started almost a decade ago, we've been done our efforts. To quickly list some concrete examples:
- The shoes we sell are made in Europe and from European leather. In order to make the high quality full grain hides we use, the animals need to have lived a relatively good life (and as you probably know, all leather is a residue from the food industry), the environmental standards for tanning are extremely high in Europe, and the working environment in the shoe factories here is good.
- Most of our other products are made in Europe in factories we visit regularly ourselves (and for example our brush factory in Germany is certified carbon neutral, read more about them in this article), and when we use factories in Asia, we work directly with factory representatives and are careful to ensure that they maintain a good standard of, for example, working environment.
- Shipments from our manufacturers outside Europe are made by sea, and within Europe mainly by train or truck, to minimise the environmental impact of freight.
- All products we sell, including the shoes, are timeless items that not only are made of high quality to last, but also designs that are made to last. The literal opposite of fast fashion. That's one of the reasons why we don't need to run sales on our shoes or other products, they are intended to be around for decades and the only difference in how we work is if we need to restock several times a year or more sparsely.
- When we pack our boxes for you, we try to avoid unnecessary air, and we reuse packaging from customer returns if they are in good condition.
Service
Time to talk about customer service. At Skolyx, we like to think of customer service as a whole, from when a customer first finds us, perhaps through a Google search or an ad, through the experience on the website and eventual contact with us, to when the customer gets home and uses their products and then hopefully becomes a repeat customer. It's all about providing good and accurate information, answering the questions the customer has, and then deliver what was promised.
The foundation of being able to provide world-class customer service is what we've talked about already - our deep and wide knowledge. It's what we try to share all the way through, in our often detailed product texts and descriptions on how to use the products, as well as in our library of various guides on shoe and clothing care. And, of course, when you contact us directly with questions.
When you contact Skolyx, it's not some outsourced customer service staff or similar that you get help from, it's from us who run the company, which you see here above. We are the ones who really can answer and give you the help you deserve, and we think that customer contact is far too important not to take care of it ourselves. We respond quickly to emails, even at weekends, and during weekdays we answer on the phone. If you have the opportunity, you are welcome to visit us in our showroom in Mölnlycke outside Gothenburg, Sweden, or meet us at the trunk shows we hold regularly both in Sweden and in various countries in Europe.
Either way, our aim is to give you all the information you need. Thus, if there is something you are wondering about that is not answered on the site, please contact us at ktj@skolyx.se and we will get back to you shortly.
Integrity
Integrity is something we at Skolyx feel is lacking in many companies in general, and in our industry in particular. One could say there is a lot of talk but less action. A clear example is the extreme overuse of the word "handmade". Nowadays, not only Goodyear welted shoes are marketed as handmade, but also sneakers and other simpler types of shoes, indeed anything that a hand has touched during the manufacturing process seems to qualify as "handmade", according to some.
Exactly where to draw the line on what is handmade is debatable, but if you know shoes for real like we do at Skolyx, you know that calling even Goodyear welted shoes handmade is a huge exaggeration. The shoes are largely made with big machines, by all means with hands guiding the shoes through them and it takes skilled people to do the work, but to call it handmade is really a stretch. Handmade shoes where the all-important welt and perhaps even the sole are sewn entirely by hand are a different matter, on that type of shoe far more other steps are also done by hand. Calling Goodyear welted shoes or even sneakers handmade is simply questionable marketing. At Skolyx, we value integrity, and we would never mislead our customers in that way. What we say should be correct and true - not just sound nice and entice people to place an order.
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COMPANY INFORMATION
Skolyx is owned and operated by Mode i Europa AB
Swedish organisation number: 556949-6630
Address: Metallvägen 5, 435 33 Mölnlycke, SWEDEN
If you want to visit us, read more on our showroom information page here.
If you are sending back a return, more information on our returns page here.
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CONTACT US
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact us. You reach us by emailing directly to ktj@skolyx.se or by clicking "Contact us" in the footer menu.