Enrico Casati

Absolutely.

Velasca is an online brand focused on handcrafted shoes.

We're based in Italy.

We produce our shoes in Italy.

And basically, we are part of the new direct-to-consumer brands that cut down the intermediation of the supply chain and offer high-quality products at affordable prices through the web.

We self-funded it at the beginning and we've just recently had a VC investment.

Small one, but consider that Italy is a bit different from the US or other European countries.

We had 750,000 euros in a VC round, which is considered like a series A here, but it's probably like a seed investment in the US.

Okay.

But we are ready to scale with this new financing.

It was actually an equity round.

Convertibles are a bit more rare here and a bit more complex.

It grew on me, the shoemaking part.

I do not come from a family of shoemakers, even though my dad is an entrepreneur in the textile industry.

So it all started with the personal need of finding high-quality, well-designed shoes while I was living in Singapore back in 2012.

And, I mean, I jumped on the opportunity both for the personal lead and for the fact that I wanted a change in my professional career.

I was a banking analyst at the time.

I knew that it wasn't for me.

I'm 29 now, and I was 25 at the time, four years ago.

And started from there, and we made a lot of mistakes because we started very naively with our own money and with a massive project.