Empresas ADOC founder dies
17/11/2009
Roberto Palomo, the founder of one of Central America’s most important companies, has died at the age of 84.
He founded Empresas ADOC in 1953 with the aim of supplying affordable shoes for all the people of Central America. The company now has 3,400 employees across five countries in the region, and runs its own tannery in its home country, El Salvador.
Mr Palomo also set up a charitable programme to fund the education of promising students from poor communities.
His inspiration came from being struck on returning to El Salvador after studying business administration in the US in his twenties by how many people went around barefoot. He decided that El Salvador would never develop unless it had more of its people wearing shoes, so he decided to apply his business acumen to making that possible.
Share this story:
