Rémy Richard opened a shoemaking workshop in Izeaux, near Grenoble, in 1908, gradually shifting from other leatherwork into full leather shoes as his skills developed. A 1926 trip to the US introduced him to rubber-soled boots, and by 1927 he'd registered the Paraboot name, borrowed from Pará, the Brazilian port where the rubber for his soles was sourced. The Richard-Pontvert family has run the company for more than a century since, now into its fourth generation, still making its shoes at a single factory in Saint-Jean-de-Moirans below the Vercors and Chartreuse mountains.