ITALIAN FOOTWEAR SOLUTION. ITALIAN FOOTWEAR SOLUTION.

ITALIAN FOOTWEAR SOLUTION

Italian Footwear Solution’s CEO and chairman Raphael Lauria stresses that quality and innovation ensures he offers a unique product to the hospitality industry

When was your company established?
Italian Footwear Solution LLC is a footwear designing, developing and manufacturing company dealing mainly with uniform specialised footwear for professional use. It was founded almost three years ago in 2010 by myself and Rajesh Menon, who is the managing director.

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We are proud to say that the Jumeirah Group, Emirates Airline, Dubai Duty Free, Hyatt Group, Sheraton and Hilton Worldwide are amongst our long list of prestigious customers.

We are proud of our heritage and see a bright future ahead of us always bringing new innovations and new patents to continuously improve ourselves, our products, our services and our company.

How many people are employed by your company?
Today IFS employs more than 32 internationally dedicated qualified trained staff in Dubai, Qatar, Italy and Canada.

What is the company’s annual turnover?
IFS has an annual turnover of more than AED 30 million with a 45% overall department growth. Our hospitality department alone should double by the end of 2014 thanks to our new franchise project across the Middle East.

What is your company vision?
Our vision and mission statement is being recognised across the world as the leaders in professional institutional footwear company. This will be obtained thanks to our team of experts and by continuously challenging ourselves by bringing new ideas and improving our products utilising today’s technology and tools for all our specific branded products.

What new products have you launched recently?
We added to our range our Prochef series for catering and Hammer Trust for safety shoes. We also added to our four specialized departments — hospitality, aviation, government, and schools — a fifth; a new medical/clinical department to cater to hospitals, clinics, spas, and pharmacies.

What other news is there from your company this year?
In January 2013, IFS opened its first IFS franchise concept in Qatar with longtime partner Anesco Trading and our vision is to franchise our unique concept of specialised branded products and professional services across the Middle East. Today we are looking for partners in Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. IFS will soon open its retail stores branded Ecoflex in Dubai and Abu Dhabi so that our customers can redeem their shoes against vouchers while introducing innovative exciting ranges for the general public.

What is your best seller?
Our best sellers for men are from our winning ranges — Oxford Executive (front office), Mr Class(front office), Derby Air Walk (back office) and for women we have the famous Court Director (front office), Court Star(front office) and finally our award winning Ms Comfy (back office).

What do you offer hotels above and beyond expectation?
We offer our 5-Star Golden Tag of Quality professional series range. We created specialised institutional footwear for professional use by listening to our customers, combined with our 32 years’ footwear experience.

These five stars are: 100% best quality pure soft grain leather; micro-fresh technology which fights bacteria, mould and fungus; orthopaedic antibacterial soft padded stress-less foot-bed making every step you take like walking on air; slip resistance light weight soles that protect the workers from slipping and injuring themselves during work; flexible technology designed shoes that follow the natural movement of the foot, giving you incredible comfort while walking.

Our business is our everyday life and with this in mind, we not only wear and try our own products but treat our customers as we would want to be treated — with respect, professionalism and speedy service thanks to our stock availability and courteous delivery drivers.

All our products are backed with our 100% satisfaction and money back guarantee and if for any reason we do not match our customers’ expectations, I will personally contact them to apologise and understand how we can improve ourselves.

Institutional customers know the necessity to have strong, durable but comfortable footwear. While our competitors are still only importing nonprofessional footwear, we on the contrary have developed our own institutional range for professional use with our own brands like Ecoflex, Ecoflex Junior, Prochef, Hammer Trust, Angel, and Capo Italy, which all have the characteristics of having our 5-Star Golden Tab of Quality.

Tel : ++971 4 8800 560
Email : info@ifsdubai.com

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