FILA

“Fila Holdings Corp.” is a South Korean sportswear brand with Italian roots. The company originally was founded by Ettore and Giansevero Fila in 1911 in Coggiola, near Biella, Italy. In 1906 brothers Ettore and Giansevero Fila joined the “Giuseppe Regis and Figli di Coggiola” wool mill in Biella, Piedmont, Italy. In 1911 the Regis brothers withdrew from the company and the wool mill took the name “Fratelli Fila S.p.A.”. FILA was officially established in 1923. It originally made clothing for the people of the Italian Alps, primarily underwear. In the 1970s it moved into sportswear, with an endorsement deal with tennis player Björn Borg, and the brand became more popular after the transition. In 1991 Fila shifted focus from clothing in Europe to footwear in the US, and completed a buyout of its US license. High-profile sponsorships, including basketball players Grant Hill and Jerry Stackhouse, helped make Fila America's fastest-growing footwear brand by 1995. In 2003 FILA was sold to “Cerberus Capital Management”, a US-based hedge fund. Cerberus owned Fila through holding company “Sports Brands International”, which owned and operated all Fila businesses around the world with the exception of Fila Korea, which was a separate company operating the brand under license. In January 2007, the brand and all its international subsidiaries were acquired by “Fila Korea”. In October 2019, South Korean boyband “BTS” became the global brand ambassadors of Fila, which made FILA’s sales soar worldwide!