We were boys, and naturally our first soccer boots were made by Q. We wouldn’t be surprised if the same goes for a great many Dutch men. Q is as old as the hills, Herman Jansen made his first pair of soccer boots back in 1905. On this site under about Q, we describe the more than 100 years of history of the brand which is so dear to us.

It wasn’t just the unknown who wore Q’s. It is no coincidence that the BIG THREE of the 20th century – Abe Lenstra, Faas Wilkes and & Johan Cruyff at a certain point or during their entire carreer wore our boots. The advance of Dutch football runs parallel to the history of Q: from stopper system, via 4-2-4 to the total football that produced international success. Than we disappeared completely for a while, before, in typical Dutch manner, re-emerging with some attacking wing play, three defenders and the keeper as the last defender! In Italy they say that Holland goes “Sempre Avanti”, while in the rest of Europe commentators often talk approvingly about the most colourful team of the European or World Championships.

As mentioned, we disappeared completely for a while. In our story , we do not hold back about this distressing chapter of Q’s history. After Holland had its sporting heyday in the ‘60s  and ‘70s, just like Q , the sports-brand went under in the ‘80s. Production in the Netherlands had become too expensive. Quality lost out to marketing and the rapid internationalisation of the sports market. Q became the DAF of sports shoes; no one wanted to be seen on them. The boots were still great but nearly everyone switched to other foreign brands – leading to the bankruptcy of 1992.

A country with a rich sporting culture ought to have a smart sports brand we thought back in 2001. That motivated us to blow new life into Q. Those unique products, Dutch through and through, ought to be brought back. Because of their solid, likeable character and, yes, that iconic trademark Q, which for a sports brand more than a hundred years after its inception, is still one of the strongest. We also felt that a piece of Dutch heritage that had disappeared should be restored to its rightful glory. It simply could not be true that this wonderful brand would never be on sale again. But would it work out?

After some research, we determined that the typical Q product might need to be modified here and there, but was very suitable for repositioning. Quality, durability and reliability are the basic elements that still apply today. Q has of course been adapted to fit the ‘zeitgeist’. Sports and fashion are on a single continuum now. The brand is influenced or fed by lifestyle, music and top international designers. Creative marketing does the rest.

The shoe shop in Hengelo (Gelderland) is no more, but now in the next century of Q’s existence our products are on sale at thousands of outlets. From Seventyfive in Amsterdam (the Netherlands) where all has started for us back in 2001 till SportyLA in California (USA) to name just one of the leading sport fashion stores in the world. The factory in Gelderland does not exist any more either; Our products are now made with greatest care in factories ranging from Portugal, Italy and Turkey to Vietnam, China and Srilanka.

We have done it! Q is back! Forgive our childlike enthusiasm, but Q is the ultimate schoolboy dream. We think it’s such a fine brand. As it turns out, the two block belts, embellishing most of our products, and the iconic Q applied on each single product are still excellent trademarks for the next one-hundred years. Whereas the family Jansen used the description, light, flexible and strong! We now dare to add Hip, cool and trendy. But of course, they remain classics.

We are proud to present to you the history, present and future of Q. We hope as you scroll through these webpages, you will get a sense of the pride, the emotion and the history that this sports brand, our sports brand, has been associated with for over a hundred years. We hope you will enjoy it as much as we do…..