Founded in 1982 by Pietro Romanelli, Italian Shoemakers, which today is headed by the founder’s sons Arthur and Oliver, has taken Made in Italy (or rather Made in Tuscany) quality and style and used it as its trademark in establishing itself on the extensive and complex market of the United States. The headquarters of the company, in fact, are located in Miami, Florida, while the production site can be found in Segromigno in Monte, in the province of Lucca. Here, the collections that are fine-tuned by a completely Italian style bureau, are first developed and produced by around ten subcontractors coordinated by the parent company, for a production capacity that arrives at 30 thousand pairs per day.
Ours is a volume-oriented production, made up by large numbers, but with constant attention to quality and meticulous care taken with each detail– comments Arthur Romanelli -. Our market of reference, in fact, is mass retailing in the United States, to the extent that today the USA is responsible for more than eighty percent of our business, followed by South America, Canada, Australia, and Japan.
This is because – continues Arthur Romanelli – when my father first moved to Miami in the late Seventies, he decided to underline the taste and footwear tradition typical of his native land, Tuscany, in order to create a ‘fashionable, but affordable’ product that could successfully be proposed to American women. In particular, we are speaking of summer sandals and shoes, which are ideally suited to the warm and sunny climate of Florida.
Ever since then our company has come a long way – explains Romanelli – and today, our product is well-known and has made headway with large American distribution chains, for which we mainly create ‘ad hoc’ collections. In fact, the American market is made up by a high concentration of stores with large surface areas working right next to one another, and so, they find themselves in need of a product that is both personalized and unique. What remains constant in every one of our products is the continuous attention to comfort.
This is thanks to the brand’s careful study of the foot’s anatomy, the shape of each model, and the use of quality materials.
The American public is very attentive to well-being, and so our footwear has always been designed to offer a high level of comfort during each moment of the day. Our second greatest strength is Italian taste: a mix of tradition and innovation that allows every woman to follow new fashion trends, without spending too much, while at the same time feeling at ease throughout the entire day.
To keep pace with the latest fashion trends and styles, the samples are constantly renewed and the collections are refreshed with new models.
Strong from its comfort-oriented, fashionable, and competitively priced product, today, Italian Shoemakers has decided to extend its reach to include other markets, and now looks to Europe for its future. At the beginning of 2017, the company launched its new website www.italianshoemakers.com, which will become a fully operative direct sales channel by 2018, in addition to its B2B platform. Moreover, besides the various trade fair events in America where it regularly participates, for the first time this past June, the company exhibited at Expo Riva Schuh.
We are very satisfied with our first experience in Riva del Garda, and this fair without a doubt is the fair of reference worldwide for a product like ours that is interested in growing in both the European and international markets. We met up with much interest, especially among customers coming from Belgium, France, and Spain, but also from Japan and South Korea. Among our short-term goals – states Romanelli – is most certainly included a strong brand image, something which we hope to achieve through our website and through our complementary marketing actions in social media, with the aim of first creating added value for our product and subsequently creating corner shops in offline retail channels. In fact, we believe that in the future online and offline channels will be increasingly integrated.
