The history of the company began in 1997, when Slávek Hruška and I founded NET CZ. We started with the production of nets for automotive, we were lucky to have skilled people and in a few years we built a prosperous company.

In 2004 we moved our production from Hluboká nad Vltavou to a rented space in Týn nad Vltavou and in the next 10 years we built our production hall and administrative facilities.

Until the time of Covid, the company prospered very well, and we survived this period of darkness and senseless repression without any problems thanks to a healthy financial situation. Unfortunately, my partner was tragically killed while riding his motorcycle. His place was taken over by his wife Jarka, who had worked in the company for a long time and together we still run the company today.

We were looking forward to a post-covid reboot, but instead a targeted destruction of European automotive has begun. It is unsubstantiated, nonsensical and driven solely by the idea that if we move the production of things to Asia, where we will not see emissions being produced, then there will be no emissions. It is not an ecological idea, but merely a demagogic one, driven mainly by a desire to accommodate and give in to the interests of China. Orders were dwindling and we were faced with the problem of redundancies. We had and have qualified employees - seamstresses, many of whom have been with us for more than 20 years. So we decided to shift part of our production from automotive to textiles. We started producing for the Czech company CityZen and opened a new production department. Because we were used to completely different quality standards from the automotive industry, we had and have no shortage of work.

We just wanted something of our own. And even though the cooperation with CityZen continues and will continue, we recruited a designer Šárka to our team and started our own brand. The choice for yachting and water wear was determined by our hobbies, because we want to do something we enjoy.

But what we mainly want is to maintain production in the Czech Republic and Europe. This is the real Green Deal: to produce quality things at the point of consumption and from local materials. To limit the production of things in countries where the word ecology is not even known and where throwing waste into rivers is as easy as breathing. Not to mention the working conditions of the workers, which any of us Europeans would describe as slave-like. In Europe, the idea is that the Green Deal means buying subsidised Chinese solar panels for the roof, putting an electric car in the garage and pretending that I am saving the planet. But that is not really the way to go. The only way is to stop wasting and try to buy things that will last and that have been made as sustainably as possible. We are aware that this is not the case with everything, the production of anything is a burden on the planet, but believe me, any production in Europe and in Asia is incomparable in terms of ecological burden. But unfortunately, because of that and because of European wages, it is also many times more expensive.

It is, of course, easiest to buy a T-shirt in Asia for USD 5 and then sell it here for CZK 500, but apart from personal profit, this does not help much. That is not the way we want to go. We want to produce here, with Czech or European materials, give work to our people and we firmly believe that there will be customers who will appreciate it.

We started with fashion for the water and for the water and quality "merino", but we have already developed and tested technical sailing clothing, jackets and trousers. Only production capacity is holding them back, but hopefully that will be resolved soon.

So that's our story, how it will continue we will soon see.

Lada Smetana