Hi there Sole-mate, thanks for seeking us out and visiting our website! Ultimately, we want you to be as relaxed and comfortable as your feet are sure to be when you make a purchase with us..
We realise that shopping with a newly discovered company can be a bit of a daunting experience, so to put your mind at ease, let’s be friends, get to know us, this is who we are and what we do!
We were born in 1971 in York, founded by Catherine Paver, an ambitious mum to be proud of, who took out a £200 bank loan (she told them for a sofa!) to fund her new business passion to find the perfect style for everyone’s feet.
We started off small, at village halls and house parties, and through her desire to source and sell shoes that fit well and look great, our company began to grow. Cathy was later joined by her sons, Graham, Stuart (Managing Director) and Ian, who have helped to nurture the family business and this desire, drive and passion to be a leader in stylish yet high quality comfort footwear.
Our company Pavers Shoes is now one of the UK’s leading comfort shoe retailers, with a focus on quality with affordability. We opened our first shop in Scarborough then York, Hull and Newcastle soon followed!
We’ve grown and grown, our dedicated buying team travel to the far ends of the world to source our fantastic footwear and now with over 130 stores in the UK and Eire, you can pick up our very own comfort range, not forgetting your favourite brands such as Fly Flot, Skechers, Padders and many more. For the fashion conscious we also offer our Bellissimo brand, encompassing the latest trends of the season, our range features the most coveted designs, ensuring you find your perfect style!
As a family owned company we appreciate good values, we believe that we should do the best that we possibly can for our customers, and be honest, reliable and trustworthy. We pride ourselves in delivering to all of our customers, whether visiting one of our stores, calling our head office customer service department or ordering online, “the Pavers Experience,” excellent value for money, great quality footwear, in pleasant surroundings and with exceptional service.
Not only that but Pavers strives to make your shopping even more personal, no matter where in the world you live! Our amazing Omni-channel operation allows you, our valued customer the chance to shop however and whenever you choose. Some of us love to shop online, some of us like to buy through the post or through TV shopping channels and many of us just can’t resist a browse in a store.
You can find our shoes and accessories all over the country and through our fantastic home shopping department – online, on TV and through our catalogue. We have shops all across the U.K and Ireland, so please check out our store locator, find out the closest shop to you and pop along for a bit of well earned retail therapy. If you’ve visited your local store before but not for a long while please pop back and have a look, as many of our stores have had a spruce up!
We’re very proud of our British heritage and so happy to still call York home, all of our head office departments are located here and we dispatch all of our shoes to our shops and direct to our customers from our base here in Yorkshire.
Although everyone needs a little bit of a revamp once in a while and in October 2006 our head office and warehouse changed and grew to keep pace with us, our stomping ground is Catherine House, our eco friendly head office and state-of –the-art distribution centre and it’s not just our customer’s feet we’re worried about! It is our own as well, we’re very concerned about our carbon footprint and the effect we have on the environment.
We understand that when we use energy we create carbon dioxide and other green house gases that change the climate. So at our head office we have the latest technology which allows us to give something back. In 2011 we installed a renewable energy system, placing solar panels onto our warehouse roof to generate some of our very own electricity, we can now generate 25% of the amount of the electricity we need in the head office and warehouse ourselves. We can put back into the grid and we use a motion- sensor energy efficient lighting and a rainwater collection system.
In 2020, Pavers Shoes was voted the best retailer to work for in the UK by Retail Week in accordance with reviews posted on Glassdoor, where we scored 4.6 out of 5.
Our goal as a retailer is to deliver happiness, but this doesn’t stop with our shoes, it’s with our people too. We know our colleagues are the kindest individuals and our greatest asset, we value the talent of every single team member who each bring a unique set of skills to our teams.
At Pavers we have created a work culture that promotes inclusivity, ambition, opportunity, and growth for all of our colleagues. We truly believe the talents, passion and dedication of our employees are the reasons behind our success. The Pavers employee is more than just a colleague, they really are part of the family.
Championing sustainability has always been at the heart of everything that we do and we’re committed to leading the way in changing the future of retail for the better. In 2021 we became the first major UK shoe retailer to achieve both the Carbon Neutral International Certification and participation in the UN’s Climate Now Initiative.
Working in partnership with One Carbon World, a global resource partner of the UN Climate Neutral Now Initiative, Pavers calculated and disclosed the businesses current carbon footprint and with the support of the Pavers Foundation, we have directly funded to offset (or balance) all emissions through certified carbon credits purchased with the support of One Carbon World.
90% of our Carbon Credits are being used to support the Guanaré project in Uruguay, a 100-year reforestation project in Uruguay. The aim of the project is to convert degraded grassland into beneficial forest plantations which will help the planet adapt to a changing climate by providing critical storm water management, ecosystem services, and wildlife habitats.
From the day that Pavers started back in 1971, to today, our mission to provide comfortable and stylish footwear has always remained the same.
Over the last 50 years we have built up a reputation for being one of the UK’s favourite footwear company’s, delivering comfort and happiness in everything that we do. To celebrate 5 decades of Pavers Shoes, we’ve gathered together some of our favourite moments and milestones.
Read More about Pavers Shoes 50th Anniversary.
The Pavers Foundation was launched in 2018 to honour the memory of our beloved founder, Cathy Paver and to continue her legacy. The Foundation donates to local charities and causes up and down the UK and beyond, as well as supporting 1 major charity per year and making donations on behalf of the Paver family. They aim to make a difference in 3 key areas: health, education and community. The Pavers Foundation celebrated their £1 million milestone of charitable giving in June 2021, just 3 years after it was founded and continues to make a meaningful difference to charities and causes close to the hearts of its colleagues.