Wojas
Already in the times of the PRL era, Nowy Targ was associated with the shoe industry – many still remember the famous Relaxes produced in the Nowotarskie Zakłady Przemysłu Skórzanego Podhale. However, the gigantic factory did not survive the free-market economic transformation after 1989. At the same time, Wiesław Wojas, a representative of a family that has been connected for many generations with the production of footwear, decided to sew shoes under the brand -Wojas, thereby naming his own name for the exceptional reliability of their performance. In 1990, he hired a few people and opened the first company store in Poland. Production in the first year of operation reached several dozen thousand pairs of shoes. Fashionable design, the ability to read the changing preferences of customers and rapid response to market changes, and above all the highest quality of the produced footwear have resulted in the rapid development of the company. In 1994, Wiesław Wojas decided to buy from the administrator of the bankruptcy estate of NZPS Podhale some of the departments of the liquidated factory together with machines. This enabled not only a dynamic increase in production capacity but also the preservation of hundreds of endangered jobs – in just one year, employment in the company had tripled. In 1996, the Wojas Trade company was founded, which took over the existing company stores and started the active expansion of the network.