Donald Graeme Moore, who'd worked his way up from pattern cutter to purchaser at the Craddock-Terry Shoe Corporation before losing that job in a Depression-era layoff, started what became Moore & Giles in Lynchburg, Virginia, originally supplying shoe-construction components to manufacturers across Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania. His son-in-law, W. Vernon Giles, joined in 1935, giving the company its current name. As the American shoe industry declined, the business pivoted into furniture leather, eventually supplying luxury hotels, private jets and high-end restaurants, before adding its own line of leather bags and accessories in 2007.