Salvatorre Ferragamo

Founded in 1927 by its namesake shoemaker, Salvatore Ferragamo S.p.A. is an Italian luxury goods company, with headquarters in Florence, Italy. It specialises in shoes, leather goods, Swiss-made timepieces, and ready-to-wear for men and women. The company licences eyewear and watches. It is the parent company of the Ferragamo Group which employs about 4,000 people and maintains a network of over 654 mono-brand stores. It runs operations across the globe.

Salvatore Ferragamo emigrated from southern Italy to the US, first to Boston and then California in 1914. He opened the Hollywood Boot Shop in 1923 and made shoes for movie stars such as Joan Crawford and Gloria Swanson, as well as for films like Cecil B. DeMille's 'The Ten Commandments'. He returned to Italy and set up a shoe shop in Florence in 1927. Though he filed for bankruptcy as early as 1933, by the end of the Great Depression he had become wealthy enough to buy the Palazzo Feroni, which houses the current headquarters of the company and a museum dedicated to Ferragamo's life and work. After the founder's death in 1960, his widow, Wanda, took over the running of the business and expanded its operations to include eyewear, perfume, belts, scarves, bags, watches and a ready to wear clothing line. The brand aesthetic has always revolved around classic Italian staples, favouring elegant, timeless clothing to trendsetting or chasing. The company's majority owners remain the Ferragamo family. It was listed on the stock exchange in 2011. The current CEO is Marco Gobetti (appointed in January 2022). The current Creative Director is British designer Maximilian Davis (appointed in March 2022).

The Ferragamo mission is to promote Italian quality and craftmanship through a range of items and licensed products.

The Ferragamo vision is to become a reference point for timeless Italian design steeped in craftsmanship and history, with shoes and leather goods forming the backbone of the business.