Any retailer would be delighted to be able to reel off such names as Madonna, Britney Spears, Victoria Beckham, Catherine Zeta Jones and Jennifer Lopez as having graced their store. Indeed, with Prince Edward’s wife Sophie among this A-list, it would be tempting to think such a brand wouldn’t have to raise its profile.
But not GINA. The 60-year-old London-based luxury shoe manufacturer is on a mission to expand its brand. And it is setting out on a serious international expansion plan to make sure the world knows all about the shoe company, named after 1950s and 60s Italian movie actress Gina Lollobrigida.
The company is run by brothers Attila, Aydin and Altan Kurdash, who took over from their founding father Mehmet. The father’s mantra was: “Never compromise on quality.” Indeed, GINA, whose prices start at £400 rising to £3,500 for a pair of handcrafted shoes, is certainly all about quality.
There are two other key things the family-owned GINA is about: being British and being a well-respected name.
Clearly the ladies in the know – and the money – are aware of the company, so why the push now? “We were at a certain level, a position in market, and we just feel it‘s time to go up a notch,” says Aydin Kurdash. “As the UK comes out of the financial difficulties it was in, it’s a good time for us to start pushing the brand forward.
“[During the recession] we did feel the business slow down, but I don’t think we suffered as much as some. We managed to weather it all and we have come out the other side.”
He adds: “In those situations you learn to be a bit leaner and a bit more in control of your business so there are positive things you can take out of it, not just negative ones, and we can take those positive things and move forward.”
Kurdash admits the company had “been cruising for quite a few years”. But in the past couple of years it has started to shake things up with new London and international shops, a new factory, a new brand manager, and new designers. “We are working with people like Giles, Julian MacDonald, Amanda Wakely and other designers in the UK,” says Kurdash.
In 2011 the company, which employs 70 people, made the decision to leave its 50-year-old manufacturing site to upgrade to new premises, which opened in 2012.
“We have relocated from Hackney, E8 to a new state-of-the-art building. We went from a 10,000 sq ft factory unit on two floors to a 40,000 sq ft factory in Tottenham, E17. It’s all very modern, with modern machinery, so we now have the facility where we can double or treble our production.”
In July, GINA left its Old Bond Street home to move to Mount Street; it also has a Sloan Street store.
Paul Souber of Colliers International, who advised GINA says: “The strengthening of Mount Street as a luxury retailing pitch meant we could crystallise the value of GINA’s Old Bond Street store into a multi-million-pound premium and bring them alongside other leading superb retailers.”
Then, at the start of last month, the Kurdash brothers took a concession in Harrod’s new Shoe Heaven. The Knightsbridge department store relocated its shoe section from a 12,000 sq ft first-floor space to a 42,000 sq ft area on the fifth floor that opened in early August.
Kurdash could not be more excited about his company’s 1,000 sq ft patch. “Everybody in the world is going to go and have a look at [Shoe Heaven] because it is so superior. We want to use that to springboard our brand into different parts of the world.”
A new brand manager, Ricardo Caggero, has also been hired this year to look after global sales. “He is looking at showrooms and franchise opportunities in other parts of the world,” says Kurdash. “We are looking at a lot of places at once, and at [having] a showroom in Europe that will probably work in other parts of Asia and other parts of the world.”
As well as the two London stores and the Harrods concession, the company already has stores in Kuwait, Dubai, and is about to open in Qatar. Kurdash says GINA is in talks to open in other countries in the Middle East and to increase its US wholesale business.
“In five years’ time we would like to have 20 to 30 stores,” says Kurdash. “We are not looking for global domination with hundreds of stores. We are looking for very exclusive, very high-end places in the best locations in top cities such as Dubai, New York, Los Angeles, Paris and Madrid – so that the brand gets well represented.”
The retail spaces will be sized from around 800 sq ft to 1,000 sq ft and normally be leasehold as they are mostly in shopping centres.
Throughout the conversation Kurdash emphasises the Britishness of the company, and the importance of protecting the GINA name. “We are the only company left at this level in the market – nearly everything else is being made abroad. So we have a unique selling point in that we are British made and the design is coming out of London. There is that London cache about us.”
And the company will choose international franchisees very carefully. “It’s all about protecting the brand and not expanding where any operator may devalue GINA in any way. It’s really important to keep the value of it up. ?It’s very exclusive. It’s very special.”
Protecting the name also goes as far as replicating the UK interior design work for all stores. “All the products will be coming from us, here in the UK. They will be all British-made, and all the staff will be trained by us.”
Kurdash says with pride: “We have been making all-leather shoes for 60 years in the UK. We have probably produced in excess of 2m pairs of shoes in all our lifetimes. They are always high quality and that in itself is an achievement for a British manufacturer supplying the UK market and now expanding into different parts of the world.”
He adds: “It’s all so that the brand has a future into the next generation.”
GINA’s history
GINA was established in 1954 in London by master shoemaker Mehmet Kurdash, who named the company after his muse, 1960s movie icon Gina Lollobrigida. Kurdash’s passion was never compromise on quality and he crafted his own designs out of the best leathers.
The first GINA store opened in 1991 in Sloan Street. That store’s success led to the company expanding into another site in 1994 on the same road.
Another store followed in 1999 on Old Bond Street where the three brothers, who took over from their father, showed off a pair of £18,000 alligator mules finished with 18-carat white gold buckles and inlaid with 36 princess-cut diamonds. The Millennium issue of The Guinness Book of Records acknowledged them as the world’s most expensive slippers.
In June 2009 the company’s first flagship store outside the UK was opened in the Fashion Avenue of the Dubai Mall, while in March 2011, the fourth GINA store opened its doors in the Mall of Emirates, Dubai. In September 2011, the brothers decided to relocate their manufacturing operation to a new 40,000 sq feet state-of-the-art unit in north London, opening in 2012.
Today, GINA makes footwear and handbags and is, the company says, the last and only British designer label creating luxury footwear in London today.
noella.pio.kivlehan@estatesgazette.com
