The history of Pantofola d'oro between tradition and innovation

The name was invented by John Charles, Juventus' Welsh top scorer, who, when putting them on his foot, exclaimed that they were more comfortable than his slippers, but the rest of Pantofola d'Oro's success belongs to Emidio Lazzarini. Son of shoemakers from Ascoli Piceno, before taking over the family business, Lazzarini had invented a long series of professions, from wrestler to billiard player, even moving to Nazi Germany in order to pursue his career as a sportsman. But when it was time to hang up his proverbial shoes, he realized that they could have become the reason why his name would have reached the coveted fame. Like many athletes, Lazzarini during his activity put aside the necessary field experience to improve the equipment used in performance to create revolutionary prototypes.

So since his wrestling shoes often slipped and hammered his feet with their nails and their hard skins, Lazzarini began to use the softest materials available. He was the first to use the calf, more malleable and flexible than the adult calf, to bind the feet of athletes, immediately obtaining excellent results. The best football players from all over Italy went to Ascoli to have their shoes made to measure by Lazzarini. From Sivori to Angelillo, from Mazzola to Rivera, from Di Stefano to Altafini, all of them went crazy for the soft and elastic leather and the modern stitching that replaced the nails. 

Pantofola d'Oro soon became synonymous with absolute quality, both in terms of material and workmanship, imposing on the market a new standard that for decades no one was able to approach. When the shoe industry was still a profession, Emidio Lazzarini had transformed the Made in Italy craftsmanship into the avant-garde of the sector by opening new factories and workshops around the world and making up to 1500 shoes a day at the best of times. Until the 1990s, Pantofola d'Oro was customary on the feet of the most creative and technical players, those who sought a different accent to their style on the field. 

Then, towards the end of the millennium, the brand from Ascoli began to suffer more and more from the competition of big brands and multinationals with very long supply chains and delocalized factories. In a market that was asking for futuristic soccer shoes designed with highlighters, Pantofola d'Oro, remaining with its classic colors and clean lines, found itself in such difficulty that it stopped production for a couple of years. But already in 2000 the company, with a new presidency, relaunched the brand that despite everything had never lost that prestige and tradition. 

"Our product comes from years of experience where we always try to bring innovations without neglecting the use of our ''historical'' materials such as calfskin. The real strength, however, are our ''masters'' who make the shoes in the factory with the same care as always," says Kim Williams, managing director of Pantofola d'Oro for over twenty years, the second Welshman after John Charles to have associated his name with the brand of Ascoli Piceno. 

Tradition and the archives represent both the past and the future of the brand "at a time when so many companies have to rely on influencers and talent to communicate, we have the chance to tell real stories, where sportsmen chose our product because it was the best, representing Italian quality until it became the Ferrari of shoes. We don't need designers for our collections but only people capable of modernizing what has already been done in the past". 

To date, Pantofola d'Oro offers nine different lines of soccer shoes, all distinguished by a classic, inimitable style and painstaking attention to the materials used. "Our product is based almost entirely on the manual qualities of our artisans, instead of the large Asian production chains," Williams says with a certain note of pride. Ours is a public that generally chooses the product on the basis of quality and is not influenced by the various soccer champions that are linked more to communication than to the product. 

For the moment, the only player in Serie A to regularly wear Pantofola d'Oro is Hellas Verona midfielder Antonín Barak, who has so far had a great season. The collaboration was born "from an initial friendship and from his desire to have a different product than his colleagues and to be a number 1 for one company instead of one of many for another larger one". 

The binomial between Barak and Pantofola d'Oro, however, is destined to continue since it is Kim Williams himself who confirms that there are many new projects on the horizon, many of which have unfortunately been slowed down by the pandemic. "We have already signed agreements with Ascoli calcio, Modena, Venice Beach soccer team, Melbourne's MacArthur FC and we will have more news shortly." This will likely include custom boots for Barak as Pantofola d'Oro has already done in the past with the help of Scottish artist Craig Black for Steven Gerrard. A real work of art obtained by pouring directly the acrylic colors representing the social colors of Ranger Glasgow on a PDO Lazzarini. 

A perfect example of how tradition and modernity can coexist in the Made in Italy when behind there are high-level artisan and a clear vision of the whole. Qualities that have always described Pantofola d'Oro, from the first prototypes created in Emidio Lazzarini's workshop to the futuristic calf skin gloves that have worn the feet of half of Serie A, in a history that still has many chapters to write.