Challenge
Whatever worked in the Netherlands had to be repeatable across the rest of the company. If the rollout landed in Vleuten, other Verder offices would want it next. The design had to scale across cities and currencies and country-specific brand discipline. With dozens of offices in the runway and trade shows on every continent's calendar, a one-off team gift was not the brief. The first order had to set the template for every office that came after.
Verder Liquids' brand is layered. Verderflex, Verderair, Packo, Ponndorf, Metplast, ITC, JEC. Multiple sub-brands, each with its own pump portfolio, each represented at the parent company's events. Whatever the team wore on the trade-show floor had to read as Verder Liquids first, with sub-brand identity sitting underneath. The shoes had to clear the same brand bar that 60 years of literature and product packaging had cleared.
Trade shows are where Verder's local teams represent the global brand. Anuga FoodTec, IFAT in Munich, IFAT Shanghai, and a calendar of regional industrial-pump events. The booth, the literature, the products on display, and the team itself all signal what kind of company Verder is to walking buyers. Ellis Smit, Content Marketeer at Verder Liquids in the Netherlands, wanted to push that brand experience further. Custom shoes felt right. Something the team would actually wear at events, that tied the look of the booth together, and that didn't feel like throwaway swag. Ellis reached out to Shoe Zero with a Classic Zero brief in Verder Liquids' brand colors.
Verder Liquids has spent decades building a globally distributed pump operation. Factories in six countries. Sales offices in dozens of cities, customers across food, beverage, pharmaceutical, chemical, and water-treatment industries. With that footprint comes a real challenge. Keeping a unified brand experience consistent across teams that rarely share a room takes deliberate work that gets repeated every time a new office goes to market.
Solution
After the team wore the shoes at events, Ellis introduced Oriol Torrano, Marketeer at Verder Spain in Barcelona, to Shoe Zero. The Netherlands rollout had landed. Another Verder office wanted in.
Verder Liquids' brand identity has been polished over decades, from literature to polos to trade-show banners. The shoes had to land at the same level, reading as Verder at a glance in any country and across any team that wore them. Logo placement, brand-color discipline, and shoe style were locked in before production. The design file became the master spec every subsequent Verder office would order against. Decades of brand work compressed into a single shoe spec.
In late 2025, Verder Liquids' Netherlands HQ placed the first order. Classic Zero in Verder's brand, run through Ellis at the company's Netherlands headquarters in Vleuten, sized for the team and ready for the trade show calendar. The first custom logo shoes rolled into the booth as part of the team's standard event kit, not as a separate giveaway.
Results
The Netherlands team wore them at trade shows
Verder Liquids' Netherlands team showed up at trade shows with the custom shoes as part of the booth experience. The team came together for a group photo, with a unified look from booth banner down to the shoes on their feet. Ellis followed up with 5-star reviews on Google and Trustpilot. She posted them on the public record after the event closed, without waiting for a vendor to ask. The reviews were live before the booth was packed away. Verder's brand discipline, polished over decades, was the bar the shoes had to meet.
Spain ordered next from the same file
After Ellis introduced Oriol at Verder Spain, the Barcelona office placed their own order for an upcoming June trade fair. What started in the Netherlands had spread to a second office across the border. Same brand and product, different country. The first rollout had become the reference point, and Oriol's order built on that design file rather than starting a new design process from scratch.
30 offices in the rollout runway
With dozens of Verder offices worldwide, the company has runway to roll the same custom-shoe program out to more teams, events, and countries. The Netherlands order set the design, and the Spain order proved the playbook. Each office that orders next picks up a finished design file, a verified brand-color match, and a tested logistics flow. One office at a time, the playbook compounds. What started at the Netherlands HQ becomes the standard every Verder office can pick up.
"Our team wore them at trade shows and the response was so good that our Spain office wanted them next. It's become part of how we show up at events."
Ellis Smit, Content Marketeer, Verder Liquids
