Some fortunes are made overnight; others are carefully crafted over many years and passed between generations. The latter is true for Hanni Toosbuy Kasprzak, the 57-year-old owner of global shoe company, Ecco, who Forbes pegs as a billionaire.
This story began nearly a half century ago. That’s when her father, Karl Toosbuy, gave up his secure job managing a shoe factory in Copenhagen to strike out on his own. He sold his house and his car and moved with his wife and then five-year-old daughter Hanni to the Danish countryside. He took over an empty factory in Bredebro and began making shoes in 1963.
Having started as an apprentice in the shoe industry at age 17, he had a clear vision, namely to make functional, comfortable shoes designed to fit the foot. “Style-conscious people were wearing those pointed, narrow shoes, made in Italy or somewhere, and I’d look at them and think, ‘That must hurt!,” Toosbuy told Forbes, which published the aptly titled 1999 story on him, “Man for all bunions.”
Toosbuy turned that simple idea into global shoe brand Ecco. He died in 2004 but his legend lives on in his company, thanks largely to his daughter, who is chairman and owner of Ecco. The privately held firm, still based in Bredebro, says it is the only major shoe manufacturer in the world that owns and manages every step of the shoemaking process.
It racked up $1.3 billion in sales in 2011, up 16% from the previous year. Ecco, which employs 20,000 from more than 50 nations, peddles its comfortable shoes to men, women and children in 94 countries, including the United States. It opened store No. 1000 at the Mall of America in Minneapolis, Minnesota in November 2011 and also has new stores in such places as Kazakhstan, Lebanon and Poland. Forbes contributor Larry Olmsted recently called one of its styles, “The Most Comfortable Golf Shoes” he’d ever worn.
Source : Forbes
Photo credit : Berlingske
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