The name comes from the Austrian province, and belonged to the shop before John Rasinger did. He walked in at Saint-Marc and Sainte-Catherine in the 1950s, recognized the name, found an owner from the same region working the same trade, took a job and bought the place in 1967. He spent decades making ski boots by hand.

In 1997 his daughter's boyfriend, a bike mechanic named Dominique Bergeron, watched him work leather and asked to be taught: three years of forty-hour weeks at the bench. Bergeron took over on his retirement and moved the business to Saint-Antoine West in Saint-Henri in 2015.

Quebec stopped offering a shoemaking diploma in 2011, so Carinthia trains its own, and former apprentices have gone on to open shops of their own. Work runs from resoled hiking boots to designer heels sent over by luxury retailers, in full view of the street.