Why Church’s CEO Denni Manzatto Is Banking on Made in the UK

Held in the melancholy shadow of the shuttered Chiltern Firehouse during Frieze Week in London, last Tuesday’s party at The Hart could have been a contemporary art-contextualized fashion amplification like any other. Yet among the jostle of thirsty freelancers, trays of tartare and Alexa Chung stood some bona fide British Old Masters of a quality and provenance not seen on the fashion scene in years. They were the Stanhope Chelsea boot, Skipton Oxford and Sidley lace-up, alongside a women’s Sloane collection led by the polished-calf Susan ankle boot.

All are products of Church’s, the Northampton shoemaker founded in 1873 and acquired by Prada Group in 1999. Overseeing their appearance at the bar was Denni Manzatto, who was appointed CEO of Church’s in 2022. Before joining Prada in 2013, the former Goldman Sachs man first encountered Church’s, which is part of the Prada Group stable, while working in private equity in London: its 1921-opened Jermyn Street store was just down from his office.

“Church’s has a higher than proportional meaning for the Prada Group relative to its business size,” he says. According to Prada Group’s H1 earnings, Church’s makes up 1% of the business at roughly £32 million in annual sales. “It is a jewel that we should preserve, we should restore, and take to new heights.” Which is why we are at The Hart: after years of intensely discreet stewardship, Manzatto and Prada Group are stepping into a new phase built around increased investment in Northampton and redoubled efforts to bring a fresh congregation of footwear aficionados to Church’s.

An infatuation with Church’s

Like most heritage brands, Church’s was once at the cutting edge of technology. As the company’s archivist Simon Hill explained during a factory visit in Northampton the following day, its 1881 “Adapted” boot was the first to make differentiated left-and-right shoes available at industrial scale. Church’s was founded by Thomas Church, before his sons Alfred and William industrialised the town’s existing cottage-industry model, bringing specialist makers under one factory roof while retaining the sequence of skilled processes that still structures production today.

It was a system born from a shoemaking tradition in Northampton that goes back to the Middle Ages and which, by its postwar peak in 1955, saw Church’s and its neighbors producing around 160 million pairs of shoes a year. The decline of empire and rise of globalized manufacturing — from increasingly dynamic centers in Italy to lower-cost production in India and South East Asia — began a long decline in Northampton’s output. And yet Church’s and some of its neighbors, including Tricker’s, Cheaney, and Edward Green, survived by turning the traditional manufacturing practices on which the town was built into an increasingly appreciated point of difference.

Prada entered Northampton in 1999, when it agreed a £106 million takeover of the then publicly listed Church & Co, offering 950p a share and fending off interest from Diego Della Valle of Tod’s. At the time, Patrizio Bertelli was explicit that Church’s British identity and manufacturing base in Northampton were to be preserved and developed, promising to “maintain and possibly strengthen the British identity of Church” while “preserving and developing its industrial presence in Northampton.”

Manzatto agrees there was, perhaps, a romantic instinct behind the acquisition. Bertelli and Miuccia Prada grew up at a time when Church’s represented, he says, “the pinnacle of English shoemaking and shoemaking in general”. He adds: “There was definitely a fascination in the first place.”

Bringing it all back to the UK

When Manzatto took charge in 2022, however, what he found was less romantic: “Business-wise, the situation was more difficult than I had originally anticipated.” Church’s was operating as a separate company and legal entity: a key part of his mandate has been to integrate it more closely with Prada Group, giving the smaller English business access to the Italian parent company’s corporate, industrial, technological and commercial infrastructure.

Church’s currently makes its core Goodyear-welted footwear in Northampton, while other models such as the Shanghai shoe and certain sneaker types are produced within Prada’s directly operated manufacturing network in Italy. During our interview, Manzatto reveals that the intention over the next few years is to transfer all of that production to Britain, including categories not traditionally associated with English shoe manufacturing. “Our vision over the next few years is to bring everything back to the UK.”

Doing so demands investment in both the factory and its workforce. “We are investing a lot,” says Manzatto. He adds that Church’s is working with local institutions to develop a new generation of craftspeople as long-serving shoemakers retire, while the manufacturing operation itself will need to acquire the capabilities required to make a broader range of product. Manzatto says the resources of Prada Group make that achievable: “If we were on our own, it would probably not be possible.”

That investment comes despite an increasingly difficult environment for British manufacturing and retail. Post-Brexit duties and administration, rising employment costs and the loss of tax-free shopping for international visitors have all affected the business. “That has impacted both our top line and our bottom line. It’s a fact.” Prada’s response, however, is not to reduce Church’s exposure to Britain. “In fact, we’re doubling down on the UK.”

Church’s currently employs 137 people in manufacture at its St James Road factory, where production still moves through the sequence of specialist rooms established by the Church family: clicking (cutting), closing, lasting, making, finishing and polishing. During our tour, which is attended by editors from Italy, Japan, and the US, we dive deep into the technicalities of traditional English shoemaking as “Boogie Shoes” by KC and the Sunshine Band plays over the factory tannoy.

One former apprentice, now full-time, is installed at her station applying color by hand to shoes from Church’s apogee line, the Crown collection: she stands out both for her casual mastery of the spray gun and the finery of her full punk look. Upstairs in the archive Simon Hill shows shoes she has engraved and decorated. Apprentices are encouraged to experiment, Hill says, because that creative freedom develops skills that can later feed back into production.

Manzatto points to the Crown and Royal collections, whose shoes can take 12 weeks and more than 320 processes to complete, as proof that clients will pay for exceptional workmanship when its value is properly communicated. “If you come out with exceptional products, and of course, if you’re able to share with your clients what it takes to create these products… there is no price resistance.”

Yet Manzatto emphasizes that his strategy is not to turn Church’s into a fashion brand dependent on constant novelty. “The vast majority of our sales come from continuity products,” Manzatto says. Seasonal product remains important, but the perennial offer drives the business “by a large extent”. Manzatto says many of its newest customers come specifically to buy the iconic Goodyear-welted shoes for which Church’s is best known.

Alongside the vintage machines on the factory floor are new screens recording workflow that bear the Prada Group logo. Following Church’s partial integration into Prada Group’s wider processes, Manzatto says it can now “look to scale up again”. He identifies womenswear as one area of opportunity and suggests that North America is likely to be the first major focus from 2027. “We aim to do more and better of the same,” he says, “to become even more established, even more recognized, even more iconic, even more English.”