Bally — can the shoemaker finally make a footprint in fashion?

Bally is a brand that just about everyone has heard of but few really know. A survey of my acquaintances yields “men’s shoemaker”, “high street shoe shop” and “shoes, quite good quality”. A colleague is surprised to learn the company is Swiss and not British.

Bally chief executive Nicolas Girotto knows this all too well. When the French-born former retail exec was promoted from chief operating officer to chief executive in mid-2019, customers told him “you have a well respected brand, a brand that knows how to do quality and beautiful product, but at the same time [there’s] a deficit of desirability”, he recalls. “This is what I try to work on.”

A pandemic, a splashy runway debut at Milan Fashion Week in 2022 and a rapid shuffle of creative directors later, and that gap between the brand’s luxury-level prices and its desirability could be on its way to closing, at least a little. In September Bally staged a joint mens and womenswear show in Milan under a new design director that was a surprise hit, drawing widespread acclaim as debut shows at bigger brands such as Gucci and Tom Ford drew more mixed responses.

In the formal gardens of San Simpliciano, models paced past in straight-leg blue jeans, elongated leather blazers and light wool jackets as slouchy and casual as overshirts, their unbrushed hair tucked behind the ears or under cotton baseball caps. The clothes were teamed with boat shoes and a century-old men’s Mary Jane shoe design that had been reimagined for both sexes, and structured top-handle bags whose briefcase-like seriousness was offset by a tinkling of cow bells in a humorous nod to the brand’s Swiss identity.

If previous collections had made Bally look a little too Italian — specifically, a little too Gucci circa the years it was designed by Tom Ford — here was something fresh, cool and persuasively Swiss. A customer aptly described it as “Swiss utilitarian chic”.

The collection was conceived by Simone Bellotti, a little-known designer plucked from the helm of Gucci’s men’s ready-to-wear team after a 16-year run. He began his career at AF Vandevorst in Antwerp in the early 2000s, returning to Milan to join Gianfranco Ferré before working at Gucci under Frida Giannini and, later, Alessandro Michele. When we speak over Zoom, he is mild-mannered and copiously polite, with none of the brash egotism often found among those bearing his job title.

Initially, Bellotti was hired as the right hand of creative director at the time Rhuigi Villaseñor, succeeding Villaseñor when he parted ways with the company after less than 18 months. (The company characterised it as a “joint decision”, but a subsequent tweet from Villaseñor urging followers to “never compromise your values or culture for anything” suggested the split was not entirely cordial.)

“[When we met] I said to Nicholas that the strongest thing we can do is show what we are,” Bellotti recalls. “We are almost the only Swiss brand, which immediately makes you unique. Bally is also still almost unknown, so there is an opportunity to show what Bally is, and be proud of the product that we make.”

Bellotti designed the first collection from the shoes up, pulling men’s loafers and Mary Janes from the archive — there are “museum quality” examples dating back to 1851, he says — and reimagining them for both sexes. The clothes were “rational, minimal” to start, mirroring Switzerland’s reputation for order and pragmatism, “becoming more and more out of control” to reflect the country’s many layers (in this Bellotti was also inspired by the early 20th-century Swiss artistic retreat Monte Verità). Ribbons and crests referenced the Bally family’s history as a ribbon-maker prior to their endeavours in shoemaking, and the cow bells added “a touch of irony”. “We don’t want to be too serious about what we do,” he offers.

The show was a moment of triumph after what Girotto describes as a “bumpy” five years. Girotto took over from his predecessor after a 2018 sale agreement between Bally owner JAB Holdings, the $50bn investment group owned by Germany’s reclusive Reimann family, and the debt-laden Chinese textile group Shandong Ruyi failed to materialise.

“At some point there were discussions, but it didn’t end in a transaction,” Girotto says.

Instead of seeking a new buyer, JAB decided to reinvest. Girotto insists “there is no pressure for short-term results and an exit”.

His aim, he adds, is “to find the right positioning for the brand, and the rest will follow”.

Girotto is not alone in trying to transform a faded, if respected, shoemaker into a major fashion-forward luxury brand. At Ferragamo, ex-Burberry chief executive Marco Gobbetti has installed young British designer Maximilian Davis to re-energise the shoemaker famous for its ballet pumps and silk scarves, and although his first two runway collections have been well received, the company’s sales have yet to recover to 2019’s €1.37bn. Tod’s performance has also lagged rivals in recent years as its classic designs struggle for attention in an era increasingly dominated by multibillion-euro luxury lifestyle brands such as Louis Vuitton and Hermès.

Certainly at Bally all the raw material is there. The company is one of the oldest continuously operating brands in luxury, founded as a family-run ribbon maker by Karl Franz in 1851, three years before Louis Vuitton began stitching together leather trunks in Paris. It has a reputation for quality and a rich archive. Its heyday was in the 1960s, when “it stood for discreet elegance and Alpine jet-set luxury life-style”, former chair Abel Halpern said in a 1999 interview with the WSJ.

Girotto is by no means the first to try to turn the brand around. After plans for a public listing were called off in 1998, American private equity group TPG Capital acquired the company from its Swiss owners with the aim of turning the conservative Bally “into one of the hottest lifestyle brands”, Halpern said in that same interview. Ex-Gucci exec Marco Franchini and Scott Fellows were hired to do what Tom Ford had done for Gucci earlier in the decade, but customers didn’t like the flashy new products, and it took five years to return the company to profitability.

By the time JAB acquired it for $596mn in 2008, Bally was generating a little over $400mn in sales annually. Fifteen years later, and the brand is still bringing in roughly that amount every year — revenues in 2021 amounted to about SFr350mn (about $380mn), and Girotto declines to say whether they have improved since.

Like much of the rest of the luxury industry, Bally has “observed a slowdown after a solid first half”, Girotto concedes. “But what gives me some hope is that the customer in this context is really looking back to the roots of what luxury is: quality, excellence, heritage. We are well positioned for that.”

He has no illusions about the obstacles he is up against. “[As a smaller brand], it’s a challenge to find space. You cannot compete with the same means, the same marketing money . . . These big conglomerates [also] have the capacity to grow through storms in an easier way than smaller brands,” he says. “Is there space for a smaller brand? I believe there is. Because customers are looking for novelty and there are many stories about successful independent brands. We don’t all need to be €10bn-€20bn brands to exist.”

To that end, he is focused on developing house “icons”, particularly within women’s handbags and shoes (men’s still accounts for 65 per cent of sales) and on less saturated markets such as the Middle East and India. Japan is also a priority, particularly as Chinese shoppers, who make up the largest portion of Bally’s sales, shift more of their luxury spending to that region amid a post-lockdown boom in regional tourism and a weak yen. New retail locations in Dubai and Ginza, Tokyo are due to open by the beginning of next year.

And while ready-to-wear is not a commercial priority — it accounts for 14 per cent of sales, compared with 41 per cent for shoes and 45 per cent for bags and accessories — Girotto “would like a few seasons from now to see a Bally silhouette that someone, without knowing the brand, would be able to say ‘this is Bally’”.

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