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The Bally Shoe company was founded as "Bally & Co" in 1851 by Carl Franz Bally (1821-1899) and his brother Fritz in the basement of their family home in Schönenwerd in the Canton of Solothurn, Switzerland. In 1854, a shoe factory was set up in the village but Fritz Bally left the fledgling business and Carl Franz Bally carried on under the corporate name "C.F. Bally." By the 1860s Bally employed more than 500 people. Within another decade it had built an international reputation for quality and design in both men's and women's shoes and expanded operations outside of Switzerland to Buenos Aires, Argentina, Montevideo, Uruguay, and Paris, France.
Carl Franz Bally died in 1899 and his sons carried on with the business. Although the Bally family maintained voting control, in 1907 "C.F. Bally & Co. Ltd." went public, their shares listed on the Swiss Stock Exchange. The added capital allowed massive expansion for their much-in-demand shoes and by 1916 they employed more than 7,000 people. Since then, he and his successors studied shoes, selecting good leather and other materials for every part, including shoelaces, from all over the world. The company also invented its own stitching methods. The success of such efforts led the manufacturer to open directly managed shops in major cities in the United States and Europe at an early stage. For the U.S. Apollo space program, the manufacturer developed shoes for astronauts at the request of the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration. In 1999, the manufacturer was bought by a private U.S. equity fund, which changed the maker's strategy to focus on not only its traditional styles and high quality, but novel and cutting-edge designs. The Busy-B series, which was designed by a U.S. designer, and the Trainspotting series, which features stripes, are the latest additions to Bally's regular lines. Today the company is headquartered in Caslano, near Milan, Italy.
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