Bally
In 1847 Carl Franz Bally and his brother take over their father’s elastic ribbon and suspender manufacture.
In 1850 Carl Franz Bally leaves for a business trip to Paris where he is seduced by a pair of subtly decorated slippers. Snapping up several styles for his wife, he returns to Switzerland, calls in local cobblers and begins pioneering the techniques of early shoe manufacturing.
In 1851 Carl together with his brother founds “Bally & Co.”, in the Swill hamlet of Schonenwerd he employs German shoemakers who work in the basement of his own home, the “Haus zum Felsgarten”. The first shoes are still entirely handmade but their manufacture is based on the division of labor.
In 1907 Bally becomes a publicly held company- C.F. Bally Co. Ltd.- with a majority stake still in family hands.
The First World War does not even halt Bally’s growth as business relations are kept with both warfaring and neutral countries. Bally delivers military shoes to the French, German and Swiss armies.
The Bally family’s love of shoes and their feeling for quality and tradition led them to begin collecting shoes in the 19th century. In 1942 C.F. Bally’s home “zum Felsgarten” is transformed into the Bally Shoe Museum. It holds one of the largest collections of its kind in the world, documenting the social and cultural history of footwear from antiquity to the present day.
In 2001 Bally celebrates its 150th anniversary.
Today Bally is centralized at the company’s Caslano-based headquarters on Switzerland’s Lake Lugano, close to Milan. Bally’s new CEO Marco Franchini assembles an international design team to completely redefine the company’s image and product offering.