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Superga (footwear)

Turin footwear brand born in the early twentieth century, famous for the 1925 canvas tennis shoe model 2750; today owned by BasicNet.

Image from the ANSA publication
From the ANSA publication, 2025-01-14

Superga is a footwear brand born in Turin in the early twentieth century, best known for the canvas tennis shoe with a vulcanized rubber sole, model 2750, introduced in 1925.[1] It takes its name from the hill at the foot of which the first factory stood and from the basilica that overlooks it.[2][3] For most of the twentieth century the shoes were produced at the via Verolengo plant, in the northern part of the city, where the workforce was mostly women; today the brand belongs to the Turin-based group BasicNet.[4]

Origins: Walter Martiny and rubber

According to the company's own account, in 1911 the Swiss-born, naturalised Italian engineer Walter Martiny founded Walter Martiny Industria Gomma in Turin, at the foot of the Superga hill.[2] Martiny had taken over a factory making tyres and rubber toys, and among its first products were rubber boots for farmers and rice-field workers.[5] The MuseoTorino record instead places the birth of the Superga brand in 1916, within the Fabbriche Riunite Industria Gomma Torinese (FRIGT).[3]

In 1913 the Martiny company built a new shoe factory at via Verolengo 28, on land where the brothers Pio and Angelo Albesiano had had a shed since 1903. The plant grew to occupy the whole block between via Verolengo, via Orvieto, via Luini and via Assisi, and in the 1910s it also produced car tyres;[4] according to MuseoTorino the buildings were erected between 1915 and 1920.[3]

The 2750, a tennis shoe

The model that made the brand famous was born in 1925. According to the company's account, Martiny designed it with his wife in mind, a tennis player: on clay courts shoes then had rope soles, and he replaced them with rubber, designing an orange-peel tread that resists wear and does not slip.[2][1] In 2011, for the 150th anniversary of Italian unification, the Superga was included among the fifty objects that made the country's history.[1] Over time production expanded to the Alpina mountain boots, with a tank-tread sole, and to football and basketball shoes.[5]

War and Resistance at the factory

During the Second World War the plant was hit by Allied bombing on 20 November 1942[4] and again on 12–13 July 1943, when it suffered heavy damage.[3] In July 1944 the company's National Liberation Committee was formed, and during the April 1945 uprising the workers defended the factory from the Germans.[3]

The Pirelli years

In 1951 Superga passed to Pirelli, which launched two decades of strong growth.[4] Production capacity rose from 2 million to 12 million pairs a year by 1975.[2] In the early 1960s the Turin plant employed 1,380 people, most of them women.[3] With Pirelli's arrival, nearly two thousand women worked in the departments, on piece rates and often in contact with harmful substances;[4] their task was to sew the canvas to the rubber upper.[6] Clara Barillari, who spent forty-six years at the factory, recalled it this way: "Here we worked on piece rates."[6]

In 1962 the graphic designer Albe Steiner designed the logo; the faces of the advertising campaigns included the goalkeeper Dino Zoff and the tennis player Adriano Panatta.[3] From 1970 the Superga Sport line, recognisable by its swallow-tail symbol, had Claudio Sala, Panatta and Ivan Lendl among its endorsers.[2] Panatta won the 1976 Roland Garros wearing the model that bore his name.[1]

Crisis, closure and the move to BasicNet

By 1976 the workforce had fallen to 751 employees.[4] In 1992 the brand was acquired by Sopaf, and Turin production ceased in the 1990s: the record on the plant gives the year as 1998.[3][4] In 2004 BasicNet became the brand's exclusive worldwide licensee; in 2007 it acquired ownership of the brand.[3][1] Under the new management Superga has been positioned as a casual footwear brand, with collaborations with fashion houses.[2]

In 2025, for the centenary of the 2750, the brand presented a model called "1925" at Pitti Uomo and brought part of its production back to Italy.[7] BasicNet's vice-president Lorenzo Boglione commented:[7]

"If a product, without changing, is still so relevant after 100 years that millions of pairs are sold every year, then we are looking at a legend."

Lorenzo Boglione to MF Fashion, January 2025

According to statements made by BasicNet to FashionNetwork in June 2025, by the end of that year Superga was expected to have about twenty directly-run stores in Europe, in addition to other points of sale run by partners in South Africa, Greece and the Philippines.[8]

The former via Verolengo factory

In 2002 the sheds were partly demolished and a residential complex was built in their place.[4] The three remaining buildings, about 3,800 square metres, are in Circoscrizione 5; owned by the city since the late 1990s, they were used by the Asl To2 health authority until 2016 and are listed as cultural heritage. After auctions that went unsold, with a starting price of 1.3 million euros in 2018, in 2024 the City launched a public-private partnership.[9][10] The project, entrusted to Paratissima, involves an investment of 3.5 million euros and three years of work to create a centre with exhibitions, festivals, co-working spaces, screenings and an art-bistro. On 30 April 2015 the garden between via Verolengo and via Luini was named after the women workers of the Superga factory.[6]

The Balletto del Teatro Superga is founded in Nichelino (September 2026)

The Teatro Superga in Nichelino is expanding its artistic project with the creation of the Balletto del Teatro Superga, a new company dedicated to dance, under the artistic direction of Laura Rossana Caffaro, director of the Centro Studi Armonia Danza. The project is not a dance school but a pre-professional pathway conceived as a bridge between academic training and the world of work, allowing young dancers to follow the stages of a production, from rehearsals to premieres, as well as tours. The Balletto will be permanently linked to the Teatro Superga, whose artistic directors are Alessio and Fabio Boasi. For the mayor of Nichelino, Giampiero Tolardo, this is a cultural project that brings together training, artistic production and the promotion of the local area.

Pages linking here

Related articles: BasicNet, Laura Rossana Caffaro, Nichelino, Teatro Superga Ballet

Sources

  1. ANSA — 14 January 2025
  2. Superga (sito ufficiale)
  3. MuseoTorino
  4. MuseoTorino
  5. Grazia — 18 June 2024
  6. TorinoClick (Consiglio comunale di Torino) — 30 April 2015
  7. MF Fashion / Milano Finanza — 15 January 2025
  8. FashionNetwork — 19 June 2025
  9. Il Giornale del Piemonte e della Liguria — 7 August 2024
  10. Torino Oggi — 20 July 2026
  11. ANSA Piemonte — 25 September 2026
  12. TorinoOggi — 25 September 2026

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