Assocalzaturifici re-elects Giovanna Ceolini as president
Italian national footwear manufacturers’ association Assocalzaturifici has re-elected Giovanna Ceolini as its president. She will stay in the role until June 2027. It made the announcement on March 8, International Women’s Day.
Ms Ceolini is the second women, after Annarita Pilotti, to be the organisation’s president. She took over in 2022 when her immediate predecessor, Siro Badon, stood down because of pressure of work at his own footwear company. Giovanna Ceolini was one of his vice-presidents, a role she had also held during Ms Pilotti’s tenure as president.
Away from Assocalzaturifici, Ms Ceolini started her career in footwear at Cele Ferrario in Parabiago, west of Milan. Here, at the start of the 1980s, she met French footwear designer Thierry Rabotin.
She has said that meeting Mr Rabotin, who died suddenly in 2017, and listening to him explain his vision of making elegant shoes that were so comfortable women would feel they were walking barefoot, changed her life.
By the mid-1990s, she was sales manager at Cele Ferrario and at company-owned tannery Conceria Buscatese. She left in 1995 to set up, with her husband Karl Schlecht and with Thierry Rabotin, a new company. In 1999, they opened their own factory, Parabiago Collezioni, which still produces shoes under the Thierry Rabotin brand.
After confirmation that she will lead Assocalzaturifici until 2027, Ms Ceolini said sustainability, digitalisation, innovation and Made In Italy would be her main areas of focus.
“We have a challenging job ahead of us,” she said of the organisation’s 450 member companies. “We have to respond to a situation that is not easy in a geopolitical framework dominated by uncertainty, with initiatives and projects that support our companies in international markets.”
Image: Micam.
