During the war years, to keep the family workshop out of the hands of the German army, the young Hector followed the family to the United States and entered university there.

In 1967 the Hector family returned home and registered their own brand, “Uncle Hector”. In 1983 the company was acquired by the Watanabe shoemaking company of Japan and became one of its core brands.

As a high-end men’s shoe brand, Uncle Hector Boot does not aim for luxury, but for the highest achievable qualities in craft, skills, engineering, materials and design. Having its roots as much in large-scale shoemaking as in the artisan tradition, the brand works with established material suppliers rather than chasing the cheapest source — vegetable-tanned linings and rubber outsoles from Italy, suede from England, and leathers selected for how they age rather than how they look on day one.

We favour relaxed understatement and the simple, good things in life, and we believe Uncle Hector Boot’s quiet style can be recognised anywhere by anyone who pays attention to shape and quality.

We share a lasting enthusiasm for everything new and well made, and at the same time a deep appreciation
for traditions in craft and lifestyle.

Uncle Hector Boot shows a minimum of decoration and the maximum of shape and form. The utmost attention is paid to the lasts and the materials. The recipe may seem simple but, nevertheless, these ingredients need expert craftsmanship to give an outstanding shoe.

The Uncle hector Boot shoes are passing through the hands of more than 300 workers. Some of them are with the industry for 40 years by now. Others are younger. Their experience combined adds up to quite a few hundreds of years of shoemaking. This is what we consider our heritage.

In 2008, kanokgi Takashi joined the company as a partner and took over management functions.

After studying shoe-making in London, he became fascinated with craftsmanship and men's shoes. Kanokogi Takashi put forward the slogan of "restoring the essence" and launched maden sub brand, which reproduces the military training shoes of 50-90 years. The design inspiration of each series is drawn from the military shoes of European countries from the 1950s to the 1990s, and then reshaped, with a strong retro style.

Mainly high-tech shoes from synthetic materials can be designed by computers and made by robots. We still use a pencil to draw the model on the last. Our boots need skilled craftsmen to accomplish hundreds of single operations to finalise a pair.

Many of these steps are done with simple hand tools — the clicking, the hand-sewn welt, and the lasting. Other operations are executed with heavy and sometimes dangerous machinery; but it is always the guiding hand of a skilled person that decides the result.

More than 30 of our styles are Goodyear welted. That construction is what lets a boot be taken apart and resoled years later, instead of being replaced.