Following the Far East, Testoni turns to Europe, focuses on the US and Middle East

Testoni hails from Bologna, Italy, but in 2022 the luxury footwear and accessories maker came under the umbrella of Chinese group Viva China, which controls the Li Ning brand (which has just shown at Milan Men’s Fashion Week) and the British brand Clarks, having previously been acquired by Hong Kong-based Sitoy Group in 2018. The Emilia-based label, founded in 1929 and specialising in men’s footwear, has since placed greater emphasis on womenswear and, following a rebrand from a.testoni to Testoni 1929, in 2025 opened a 200 square-metre flagship on Via Manzoni in Milan.

The Milan boutique is part of the brand’s relaunch plan. In the same vein, the company has taken on a larger showroom to support retail and wholesale activities, at Via Sant’Andrea 21, where the presentation of the Autumn-Winter 2026/27 collection was held. “We currently operate 30 single-brand stores; we have just opened a new one in Taipei,” Philip Yau, CEO of Testoni, tells FashionNetwork.com. “They are located mostly in Asia- in China, Japan, South Korea and, indeed, Taipei. But after focusing on the Far East, we now want to look more to Europe, with Italy as a starting point, and then move on to the US.”

“We had a presence in America in the past, but we had closed the business there. Now we will reopen that market, where we were selling 10 million shoes every year. We have a large distribution centre in Hanover, near Philadelphia. Retailers such as Macy’s and Nordstrom, with whom we have established contacts, can help us successfully resume business in that market,” continues Yau, who is also aiming for “operational, logistics, marketing and other synergies with the brands Clarks and Li Ning and with the group’s market reach.” “Asia remains a strong base for us at Viva China, where we own many companies,” he says.

There are around 60 multi-brand stores that sell Testoni, making distribution highly selective at the top end. “Testoni has always been a more retail-oriented brand, but we are working to expand into wholesale as well, which we believe can be a strong driver of growth,” adds Testoni’s general manager, Enzo Vaccari. “So wholesale expansions are planned, especially in the US and other overseas markets. Nor are we neglecting e-commerce, which is quite small at present. It can do much more; we will work on it by leveraging the synergies we can establish with Clarks’ platform.”

Autumn-Winter 2026/27 has seen an increase in men’s styles and focuses on the Testoni brand’s core offer: loafers, moccasins, clean lines, no eccentricities, underscoring its craftsmanship. “In three years we will celebrate our 100th anniversary, so we have a very rich archive that could certainly form the basis of a museum,” Vaccari adds. “It is one of our dreams, because in our archive there are original products from the 1940s through the 1950s and 1960s, and we have all the original designs by Marisa Testoni, the daughter of Amedeo Testoni, the founder. At the moment, these materials are kept in Piazza XX Settembre, near the Montagnola in Bologna, but we are working to rethink the space and reorganise everything properly. We wanted Bologna to be the focal point of this project, because it is the city where we were born, where the company’s history lies.”

Testoni also makes handbags, another line that has expanded in terms of styles, while men still account for 70% of revenue and production. “However, we are trying to achieve a better balance between the collections: we need to develop more bags dedicated to women,” Yau notes.

From a financial standpoint, the official 2025 year-end has yet to be finalised, so Philip Yau does not intend to disclose Testoni’s annual turnover, which nonetheless grew in the single digits. The leading markets are China, Taiwan and Hong Kong combined- Greater China- accounting for 40%, followed by Japan. “But the US is and will be a key market for Testoni and for the entire Viva China group, as is the Middle East, not only through wholesale distribution but also via retail openings currently under consideration,” explains Enzo Vaccari. “In America we have just returned; we want to find a major retailer, like Macy’s, which has more than 300 doors. In the meantime, there will be consolidation of retail in Asia, where we are looking at other markets, such as Singapore and Malaysia, which we would like to enter within a couple of years, depending on the opportunities that arise.”