HOLO Footwear moves headquarters from Portland, Ore. to Grand Rapids

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Rommel Vega still remembers the reaction when he announced he was moving the headquarters of his shoe company, HOLO, from Portland, Oregon to Grand Rapids.

“It was like ‘why,’” he remembers friends and colleagues asking.

Portland is the home to Nike, Adidas, Columbia Sportswear, Under Armour and more, and some of Vega’s counterparts didn’t understand why he wanted to leave the bustling West Coast city and move his sustainability-focused footwear company to the Midwest.

The answer: financial support, access to skilled workers, and an opportunity to create his own path. He didn’t want to be just another shoe company in Portland, he said.

“We needed to go somewhere where we got more support from the community, more support from investors,” said Vega, 39, who moved HOLO to Grand Rapids this year after launching the company in 2020.

Several months after setting up shop here, he says the transition to Michigan is going well.

On a recent morning, Vega showed off his company’s new headquarters on the fifth floor of the CWD Building in downtown Grand Rapids. With panoramic views of the city’s skyline and Van Andel Arena, he and his seven area employees use the open-office style space to meet with retailers and discuss sales, product design, and other matters.

Dozens of shoes line a wall near the office’s entrance.

Vega uses the footwear — available in styles for casual wear, hiking, running and more — to talk with sellers about his company and its commitment to sustainability.

“We always say these shoes are made of trash, because they are,” he said, describing HOLO’s use of recycled materials such as water bottles to create its footwear.

HOLO prides itself on its production methods.

Holding a shoe, Vega points to the sole, and says a series of tiny, bumpy, multi-colored dots are the outcome of a manufacturing process that uses less energy and water than conventional methods. Rather than being smoothed out, which would require a more intensive production process, the ground-down recycled material used to create the sole is left in its original form, he said.

“We feel that it gives it a lot of character,” he said. “You see a lot of the bumps and blemishes, and you see a lot of the recycled contents that’s been re-grinded into the material.”

Vega, who grew up in Miami and attended the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, worked in the shoe industry for nearly two decades before he started HOLO. His resume includes stops at Puma, Keen, Columbia Sportswear, DC Shoes and Fossil, a watch manufacturer.

He’s no stranger to West Michigan, though.

Earlier in his career, about four or five years ago, he spent a couple years at Wolverine World Wide in Rockford. During that time, he lived near Knapp’s Corner in Grand Rapids Township and spent a lot of time downtown, he said.

“There’s a lot of young people here, there’s a lot of people here who have a lot of good energy,” he said.

Today, HOLO shoes can be found in retailers such as Macy’s, REI, Nordstrom, Backcountry.com, and more.

But, moving forward, Vega says he plans to expand the company’s reach, both nationally and locally. Sales are on track to exceed $5 million by the end of the year.

“We will be in 50 Meijer stores by January or February,” he said.

Price is important to Vega.

He says HOLO’s priority is to make sustainably created shoes that are affordable to a range of consumers. HOLO’s shoes range from about $50 to $100.

“There’s a group of consumers that are being left behind and they’re being left out of the sustainability conversation,” he said. “We wanted to create a brand that really speaks to everyone, regardless of where you live and what you’re doing.”

In Michigan, Vega says he’s found the support needed to grow his business.

While the venture capital and investment community on the West Coast is heavily focused on tech, HOLO has been able to tap into investment networks and raise “a lot of funds” in Michigan, he said.

That includes investments from Grand Rapids-based BIC Capital Partners, Invest Detroit Ventures and Michigan Rise, which supports entrepreneurs and technology startups and is administered by the Michigan State University Foundation.

HOLO also received a $250,000 performance-based grant from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation.

The grant provided a $100,000 award to HOLO for signing a three-year lease at its headquarters, 50 Louis St. NW, as well disbursements of $2,459 for each new job the company creates in Grand Rapids. Those disbursements would be made for up to 61 new jobs.

“The community here, from an investment standpoint, has been extremely supportive,” said Vega, who’s also tapped into venture capital networks in Chicago. “The overall Midwest ecosystem is really, really good.”

Moving forward, finding skilled workers is another goal for HOLO.

In addition to seven employees in the Grand Rapids area, many of whom spend time working remotely but come to the office for meetings and other events, HOLO has four remote employees in Portland.

As the company settles into Grand Rapids, Vega says he will work to build relationships with art and design schools in Michigan and elsewhere in the Midwest with the goal of attracting the employees needed to help his company grow.

“We’re a product-driven brand,” he said. “So, to be able to tell your product’s story, you have to have really good product people, and so our approach is to make sure we have really good product people — and I think this town has it.”

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