Fred Mello, a 14-year-old Italian brand inspired by New York lifestyle, has signed a partnership for the launch of a men’s sneaker with Nice Footwear, an Italian sneaker specialist, for s/s 2021.
The Italian sportswear brand has recently refreshed its brand identity by redesigning its logo with graphics inspired by New York’s iconic Chrysler Building and added it to the new men’s sneaker model available in 14 color variants.
For this first season the new shoe will be sold in Italy only to about 280 stores part of Fred Mello’s distribution network at about €120 at retail. Starting from f/w 2021-22 the sneaker–eventually flanked by more styles including also women’s ones–will also aim to expand internationally starting from Greece and France, too.
The company designs, produces and distributes its own sneaker brand Kronos and others under licensing agreement. It operates both in the Italian market, counting for 30% of its revenues, and for the foreign one, representing 70% of Nice Footwear sales. Its present brand portfolio comprises 14 historical brands including Ellesse, Avirex, Conte Of Florence and Fred Mello. It also collaborated for special projects for Blauer, Levi’s, La Martina, Napapijri and Dainese, among others.
The footwear specialist registered some significant growth results in the last two years and expects to close 2020 with €24 million sales selling to a total of 1,400 doors. It also opened two new showrooms in Milan and Hong Kong in 2019 and produced up to two million pairs of shoes per year, 2,500 new articles and over 20,000 pairs of sample collections.
Nice Footwear is caring for producing according to transparency and efficiency criteria while it employs new forward-thinking technology for its design and production phases by using its own registered native 2D and 3D software. Among the advantages of this technology it can access all projects from their head office and showrooms through its own cloud saving 80% time for decision making and 50% costs for prototype production.
The company is also sensitive to producing according to eco-friendly criteria. It therefore uses a selection of sustainable, recyclable, biological and of vegetal origin materials and holds eight quality certifications including REACH, Oeko-Tex 100, TF-Traceability & Fashion, GRS (Global Recycled Standard) and others. Among its future plans there is also a very ambitious one as it aims to increasingly follow responsible practices and produce a 100% sustainable sneaker brand.
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