“She believed that a shoe told you more about a person or culture than any other object.”
In 1946, Sonja Bata married the heir to a Czech shoe manufacturer. Fifty years later, their company was selling a million shoes daily all over the world.
As her Financial Times obituary explains, this growth came from dissatisfaction: “Not content to be just the boss’s wife… she studied every aspect of the business.”
From their postwar headquarters in Ontario, Ms. Bata rebuilt – and then expanded – the brand:
Over time, she took over responsibility for product development and marketing, while her husband managed operations and personnel. She proved a talented trend spotter. Anticipating a switch in style from square to pointed-toe shoes in the postwar years, she convinced the company to re-tool its production ahead of rivals. Later, she led efforts to standardise Bata stores around the world, well before other retailers did so, designing a standard store that could be shipped in modules and assembled anywhere in the world.
Her devotion to shoes extended beyond their production and sale; she was an avid collector, and founded the Bata Shoe Museum to display footwear from the past 4,500 years.
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Under Mrs. Ferragamo’s leadership, first as president and later as head of the board of directors, the firm grew from producing 6,500 pairs of shoes a year to more than 10,000 pairs a day.
Wanda Ferragamo also married before she was 20 years old. Her husband, a cobbler, had found success in America making shoes, but wanted more. According to her Washington Post obituary, “his goal was to move beyond shoes and make the family business a full-fledged fashion house.”
His wife set to work:
One of the first things she did was to introduce handbags to match the shoes… Other items soon followed, including scarves, men’s shoes, jewelry, eyeglasses and ready-to-wear clothes. Boutiques bearing the Ferragamo name opened in New York, Hong Kong, Seoul and other cities.
And although she ran a family business, Ms. Ferragamo was no pushover:
One of the rules she established was that each child would receive the same salary. Another was that no in-laws were allowed to work for the company.