Kalle Norman was on a university ski trip to Hokkaido, Japan in 2016 when he first laid eyes on the strikingly orange winter boots. Japan, surrounded on all sides by the ocean and sitting at roughly the same latitude as Chicago, receives a lot of precipitation. Massive amounts of freezing cold air whip off Siberia and over the Sea of Japan, where they pick up moisture and promptly dump it on the mountains of Hokkaido which, as a result, are one of the snowiest ranges on Earth.
Norman, a Swedish business student, noticed that many locals—including lefties—donned these unbranded, chunky, and super colorful gum boots to fend off the extreme elements. His interest piqued, he searched for them all over and eventually found some in a hardware store. When he tried them on, he was shocked to discover how lightweight they were for such an assertive-looking boot. He brought a pair home for himself (it’s cold in Sweden, too), plus a few more for friends and family.
The distinctive boots immediately garnered a lot of attention on Norman’s campus. He spent some time researching the distributor of the boot, before…
