Tod’s appoints Simona Cattaneo as general manager

By

Dominique Muret

Translated by
Nicola Mira

Published
Oct 11, 2021

The senior management at Tod's is changing. The Italian luxury footwear label has modified its governance structure “in order to shorten the decision-making chain,” as Tod's stated in a press release. The group’s president and vice-president, Diego Della Valle and his brother Andrea, have assumed the duties of CEO, and will be supported by a general manager.

CEO Umberto Macchi di Cellere, who has been in office for four years, is leaving the company. At the same time, Tod’s has hired Simona Cattaneo as general manager. Cattaneo has spent most of her career in the beauty industry, and previously worked at Coty, which she left this summer.

Cattaneo joined the New York-based cosmetics group in July 2016 as marketing director, and later became president of Coty’s luxury brands business. Under her aegis, Coty added to its portfolio by acquiring Kylie Jenner’s beauty brand, Kylie Cosmetics, and by finalising the purchase of a stake in Kim Kardashian West’s KKW.

Ads

Before joining Coty, Cattaneo had worked for nearly four years as senior vice-president beauty at Burberry. She also did a stint as general manager of the make-up division at Parfums Christian Dior, and was international brand director at L'Oréal, a position she held for 13 years.
 
By assigning all executive powers to Diego and Andrea Della Valle, Tod’s intends to “make decision-making faster for the group's operational structure and all its front-line managers.” In 2018, the group had initiated a profound change in strategy by deploying a relaunch plan that coincided with the arrival of Umberto Macchi di Cellere. At the time, Tod's dismissed General Manager Claudio Castiglioni and CEO Stefano Sincini, who left after 33 years working alongside Diego Della Valle.