Eytys is the Stockholm footwear and fashion brand founded in 2013 by creative director Max Schiller and chief executive Jonathan Hirschfeld, best known for chunky-soled sneakers such as the Ace, which are handmade in Portugal from cow-leather uppers with calf-leather linings and double-stitched rubber soles. Acquired by Acne Studios in April 2024, the brand filed for bankruptcy at the Stockholm District Court at the start of 2025 and was then bought back by Max Schiller with investors including Nils Thams’ Uchu and Acne Studios co-owner Mikael Schiller, relaunching around its footwear core with an experiential store in Stockholm.
Eytys built its name on a single silhouette: the Mother sneaker and its successors, with exaggerated rubber soles that helped define the chunky-trainer cycle of the late 2010s. From the brand’s launch in 2013 that footwear has been handmade in Portugal, with premium cow-leather uppers, calf-leather linings and insoles, double-stitched rubber soles and waxed laces — the northern Portuguese shoe cluster giving a small Stockholm label access to craft production at a scale a Swedish factory could not offer. Portugal is therefore not a market for Eytys but its manufacturing base, the same pattern followed by Gothenburg’s Axel Arigato and Stockholm’s C.QP.
The corporate story has been turbulent. After a decade of growth into denim and ready-to-wear, Eytys was acquired by Acne Studios in April 2024; at the beginning of 2025 it filed for bankruptcy at the Stockholm District Court after years of losses. Co-founder Max Schiller subsequently bought the brand back with a group of investors, including Uchu, the investment company of Nils Thams, and his brother Mikael Schiller, co-owner of Acne Studios, and relaunched Eytys around its footwear roots with an experiential store in Stockholm.
Eytys is a case study in how dependent Sweden’s premium footwear brands are on Portuguese factories — and in how that supply base survives a brand’s ownership crises. Whatever the shareholder structure, the shoes are still made in Portugal, and for the Felgueiras, Guimarães and Porto-area workshops that serve Nordic labels the relevant question is not who owns the brand but whether the order book returns. The relaunch suggests it has.
2025: Bankruptcy filing in Stockholm followed by a buy-back led by co-founder Max Schiller with Uchu and Mikael Schiller; relaunch focused on footwear with a new Stockholm store, as reported by Business of Fashion and WWD.
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