Valsport to target overseas markets with an initial focus on the US

The sneaker brand Valsport, helmed since 2016 by the Padua-based company Rewind S.r.l., which also owns the Lerews and Scarpèts labels, is repositioning itself by leaning more into its heritage and sharpening its focus on overseas markets.

“Craftsmanship, Made in Italy, and heritage are the values we want to convey, and they will be the pillars of our evolution beyond 2026, which will be a year of transition,” Valsport CEO and partner Siro Toniolo told FashionNetwork.com. In the 2025 financial year, with turnover stable, 70% of Valsport’s sales were abroad and 30% in Italy. “We aim to reverse those percentages within five years, primarily by investing 10% of our turnover in an internationalisation plan launching in 2027.”

To implement the plan, the management team has engaged external consultants to explore how best to strengthen brand awareness. “We are increasingly streamlining and reducing the colour palette of our footwear, because our analyses indicate that our target audience is decidedly more premium than our current positioning suggests,” Toniolo continues. “This rationalisation will also extend to distribution across the roughly 280 stores in Italy and 200 abroad where we are sold wholesale, with a preference for top stores.”

The online store accounts for around 10 per cent of turnover. “And it is growing especially overseas,” says the CEO of Valsport, which outside Italy is sold mainly in Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, France, and Japan. “We have set our sights on the United States,” assures Siro Toniolo. “And we are beginning to consider opening our first mono-brand store. We are looking closer to home, in Padua, rather than Milan.”

The company was in fact founded in Padua in 1920 by Antonio Valle, and in the 1960s and ’70s it shifted from producing sports equipment to sportswear and sneakers, becoming in those decades and into the 1980s one of the best-known brands of football boots. The company currently employs 25 people in Rovigo, where production takes place, and around ten at the Padua headquarters.

No Pitti? “No,” Toniolo replies. “2026 will be a year of consolidation of our current market, in anticipation of what will happen in 2027.”

On the product front, for Spring/Summer 2026 Valsport presents a reimagining of the heritage sneaker “Tournament Nude,” a model that takes the sole of the “Davis” and recasts it in a more minimal, refined guise. The result is a clean, sophisticated sneaker with comfort front and centre. Crafted from premium, unlined deerskin-effect leather, the shoe offers an exceptionally soft, natural feel on the foot. Available in three colourways- white, black, and white/black- the Tournament Nude is made entirely from Italian materials and features a cup-sole with a honey-coloured tread for the white variant, and black for the black and white/black variants.