Gallo sells (and remains Italian): 70% at the high partners bottom. From the « English customer » to airports: history

«My son Lodovico wants to be a ski teacher, he will begin next year. I was late, at 53 years old. He has 16. He follows his way, also face the gardener, I want to be happy and that he does not feel obliged from anything and nobody. The important thing is that the company is alive and goes on, I am doing everything to make it more and more independent. The ability, culture, is in here, in the walls ».

With these words, pronounced in February, Giuseppe Colombo He actually let go of « his » Rooster. Now it happened: 70% of the historic stockings brand went to private Milanese equity High partners. Columbus remain 30% and the role of president and creative director. Yields the chair of CEO.

The goal: abroad, which for now weighs only on 5% of the turnover. Leaving the borders of the Belpaese, already caressed with the shops in stations and airports.

Internationalization. Which, retracing the history of the brand, is written in its DNA.

And he is one of the first anecdotes that Columbus quotes rewinding the ribbon: «I remember a journey in ’99, it was Christmas. I had taken a long flight, 10-15 hours for the United States. I had amazed that those sitting in the front row – where there is the screen – had taken off their shoes, I don’t know why people when they arrive by plane must take off their shoes by force … but above all All those who had leaning their feet on the seat had the writing Gallo on the socks».

Why is the name, and not the characteristic design of the stylized rooster’s head, visible on the foot, a choice that with the hindsight, has the winning and iconic confirmed itself? « My father said: If you care about something, you put your name to you. So I thought that if I wanted to do something serious, I had to highlight the word « rooster » ».

To break the patterns of the time, above all the colors: «I asked: how many colors can support a frame? Nine. Then I said: let’s start using them all. Mix them, make them live in a unprecedented way, make socks a visual experience, « says Colombo, stroking the raw materials he has on his desk, showing the sketches, the projects. Underlining the role he has continued to play over the years in creative conception: « I go around, I go to see the exhibitions, I go to the museums. And I observe, I always look for something that turns on the eye ».

The starting point: «I wanted to create an object that would give a sensory pleasure, like a work of art. We create the colors hereare not the Pantone colors. There are people who put years to recognize them. If it is not perfect, it refers ».

Here is theuniquenessor at least part of the uniqueness, of this Italian company crouched in a historic building in Desenzano del Garda: the buyer enjoys a work of selecting shades that only an expert and trained eye is able to do. The same applies to the materials, the seams controlled and checked by hand in search of a perfection that a profane eye, let alone a foot, is barely able to recognize.

Then there are the cars: «We still have the Bentleypost -war English frames, the same ones who produced pieces for planes and Rolls Royce. We keep them, piece by piece. And when something breaks, or we reconstruct it, or we invent it ».

History

The brand was born in 1927 in Milan, when Colombo’s grandfather detects a small laboratory in via Argelati. At the end of the 1930s, the activity moved to Desenzano, where the factory is still found. His son Ambrogio relaunches her after the war. Siam – Anonymous company manufacturing industries – is the first nucleus. «Men’s socks came out, gray and blue. They had to last, you only bought what was needed ».

Then Italy changes, and also the company. The perforated socks, the collections for children and for working women arrive. Giuseppe, the current Colombo, arrives in 1998. After a life in finance and immobiliat, he follows the pternal footsteps a little because he no longer enjoys, a little for sense of duty Because Ambrogio points out to him (that’s why those sentences on Lodovico).

The product transforms. Elastic stockings, one size – « So they are easier to buy and give », colorful, ironic.

All new, too new, perhaps. At the beginning it was a failure: «The agents returned without orders. Nobody believed it. It was too strange, too strange from the box. « 

Colombo tries with the traditional sales network, but the market rejects it. «The product was ready, it was done well, it was what I wanted. But we couldn’t get it in. The agents – good people, but accustomed to another world – were in front of an all different sock, with a thousand colors, with the writings, the lines, the drawings … and they did not know how to sell it. They went back and said to me: beautiful, but nothing is done ».

At that point he understands that we must change strategy: he opens a shop in the heart of Milan, in Via Manzonia few steps from the fashion quadrilateral. .

The English customer

When did he understand that he worked? The English customer day, we are always in the late nineties: enter, buy a couple of socks. It comes out. Then he returns, he takes five more. Comes out again. Then he comes back a third time.

« He looks at me and says, » I don’t know what to do with it, but I like them.  » I understand there. We had hit the center. We had done something that people wanted even without need. It was what I was looking for: impulse».

The idea, therefore, was to change the motivation of the purchase: « There are two great reasons for those who buy: the need – and one is then always attentive – and the impulse, which instead moves emotions ».

Shortly thereafter, it is noticing it Elio Fiorucci: «Fiorucci came to see the shop and immediately asked me for the collection for its spaces. When someone like him asks you, you understand that you are going in the right direction ».

Gallo takes flight: in twenty years, he has reached more than 40 single -brand stores, scattered throughout Italy. The turnover reached 30 million euros in 2024. The employees are 215 today. In the years, costumes, accessories and clothing have been added to the socks. And the company purchased the French Doré Doré.

We are in front of a window, Colombo turns and looks at the garden: « See those palm trees? I planted them, bringing the seeds from Versilia. We use the palm trees a lot in our drawings ». Thought always goes there: ideas, colors, lines, lines. «The lines are there everywhere in nature. But ours are not regular. They are emotional lines ». Emotions. The future starts from here.