Salvatore Ferragamo left Bonito, Italy for the US at sixteen in 1914 to work in his brother's cowboy-boot factory in Boston, before opening a Hollywood shop that earned him the nickname "Shoemaker to the Stars." He returned to Florence in 1927 and set up a workshop on Via Mannelli employing sixty shoemakers, exporting back to the American market he'd just left. Over the following two decades he patented construction innovations including the cork wedge heel and the reinforced steel shank, and after his death in 1960 his family carried the company forward into the fashion house it is today.