Isabel Henriques da Silva, a fashion designer, and José Maria Refóios, an entrepreneur, founded JAK in Lisbon in 2014 after concluding that minimalist, well-made sneakers at a reasonable price simply didn't exist yet. Every pair is made in Portugal and sold direct to the customer rather than through retail partners. By 2022, online sales made up 62% of turnover, with the large majority of that shipped abroad, mainly to the US, UK and Germany.