I'm not a shoe guy, but I do love this story of entrepreneurial achievement.
Ferragamo started as a bootmaker for Hollywood films, found some of his customers still found the boots uncomfortable, went to the University of Southern California to learn about anatomy and weight distribution, then invented arch support.
Go read the whole thing. And think about economic geography. Hollywood provided base demand for the product, high end clientele to buy his private designs, and a university where Ferragamo could pick up the skills he found he needed to improve his product. As an immigrant, he maintained ties to Italy and went back there to combine adapted American production techniques with cheaper artesianal skilled labour and developed something entirely new for export back to America.
HT: @Isegoria, whose Twitter feed most regularly delivers me delights I'd not otherwise seen. #FF
