Salvatori Ferragamo didn’t make beautiful shoes, he made shoes that work with the human body beautifully.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So here’s one of those.

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Dave Young:

Welcome back to the Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here along with Stephen Semple, and we’re talking about businesses and empires and how people grew their business and the decisions they made and all of those things. Hi, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

Hey, David.

Dave Young:

I’m struggling here because you told me we’re going to talk about Ferragamo.

Stephen Semple:

Yes.

Dave Young:

And you’re not even going to understand this. I think it’s a clothing thing, a fashion thing.

Stephen Semple:

Yep.

Dave Young:

But let me tell you what comes to my mind, my adult 60-plus-year mind.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, this should be entertaining.

Dave Young:

I think back in the ’70s, I think, the University of Nebraska Cornhusker football team had a quarterback named Vince Ferragamo.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, there you go.

Dave Young:

He’s a pretty good guy. Pretty good quarterback. And that’s what I though of when you said Ferragamo.

Stephen Semple:

Okay. Not him.

Dave Young:

Fashion didn’t come into it. So it’s not him.

Stephen Semple:

Not him.

Dave Young:

So there’s another Ferragamo somewhere.

Stephen Semple:

There is, believe it or not.

Dave Young:

Oh, I’m all ears.

Stephen Semple:

Well, here’s the thing that’s kind of interesting about Ferragamo. They’re a pretty big player in the luxury brand space. They mainly do shoes, but it’s not as big as Gucci or Hermes or some of those other ones, but they still do like a billion dollars in sales. They’ve got, call it about 3,500 employees worldwide. They have 450 stores. 85% of their sales are shoes and their shoes for the most part run from about $750 US to about three grand.

Dave Young:

Okay. Are you wearing yours right now?

Stephen Semple:

I do not have a pair.

Dave Young:

Okay.

Stephen Semple:

Do not have a pair. But what’s really interesting, so the company was founded by Salvatore Ferragamo, who was an Italian immigrant. The company was started in 1923 when he opened the Hollywood Boot Shop in California where he became known as the shoemaker to the stars.

Dave Young:

I was thinking this would be an Italian company, but this is an American immigrant story.

Stephen Semple:

Well, except in 1927 he returned to Italy and he established the company in Florence. And in 1938, he purchased the historic Palazzo Spini Feroni, which remains the company’s headquarters. And this is kind of where my story starts. Dave, as you know, I was recently in Florence where I spent two weeks just wandering the city and I literally came across the Ferragamo headquarters, which is this stunning old building that’s just right off the banks of the Arno River in the center of the city. It’s this beautiful store that on the ground floor, there’s a store on the ground floor, there’s the offices above. It’s all been beautifully restored and a museum in the basement.

Dave Young:

Wow.

Stephen Semple:

So I had to visit the museum.

Dave Young:

And we missed the opportunity for you to just have me fly over and we’d do this live from the plaza.

Stephen Semple:

That’s it. We did miss this opportunity, but it’s always an opportunity for an update. So I had to visit the museum and this is where I learned the story of Salvatore Ferragamo, which actually turned out to be really fascinating. He is a very real Renaissance-style man, or he was. Engineer at heart, studied anatomy, had patents for other industrial machines. And this is what really made him different. In the early 1900s, most shoemakers believed their job was to make attractive shoes. That’s kind of how the industry leaned. And Salvatore believed his job was to make shoes that worked with the human body. So he did something different. He studied anatomy.

Dave Young:

I like this guy already.

Stephen Semple:

He attended classes… Yeah. He attended classes where he learned how the foot carried weight, how the arch functioned and why fashionable shoes were painful. Then he redesigned the shoes based upon what he discovered. And to me, that’s part of the Ferragamo story that’s worth listening to. It’s not just about the shoes, but it’s the moment where he stopped thinking like a shoemaker and started thinking like a customer. Now, this was in the museum, which is kind of a tribute to the business. So how true is that statement?

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

So the next day I’m standing in line to climb the 458 stairs to the top of the Duomo in Florence. So while standing in line, often what happens, people get talking about where are you from? How long you’ve been? What have you seen? And the lady in front of&...