It's the 111-year old Australian business that has brought its manufacturing back to South Australia.
Rossi Boots' manufacturing assets were bought by Propel Group - owners of fellow Aussie brands Driza-Bone and RB Sellars - in April 2020, following Propel's earlier purchase of Rossi's IP and business assets.
Following a short hiatus of ceased manufacturing during the pandemic - which the previous factory's owners had to enter administration - Propel recognised that it was important to the brand and its customers that it manufactured onshore.
"So it didn't take the new board of Rossi Boots to make a decision very quickly that we would try and buy those [factory] assets which we ultimately did, and we made a commitment to get the factory we opened as quickly as we could," Propel Group chief executive Caroline Elliott said.
"We've employed a new lot of staff, we've got a new production manager, we've reconfigured the equipment and we've bought some new equipment in, and we will continue to try and upgrade and grow that factory as demand requires it," she said.
Caroline Elliott
In addition to bringing the manufacturing back online, Propel Group has also launched an eCommerce site for Rossi Boots.
"We launched new Rossi Boots website, and the growth through that has been really pleasing, since we launched," Elliott said.
"So whilst doing these doing significant business investment during a pandemic, some might say is a bit mad, we bought the Rossi Boots business - we settled on April Fool's Day, at the beginning of a global pandemic - and the initial reason why we bought Rossi Boots hasn't changed and that it's an amazing brand, quintessentially an Australian icon, and it's still got a very loyal customer base.
"The reasons that we bought the brand in the first place will exist beyond the pandemic.
"The direct to consumer customer base that we're targeting initially is very similar to our RB Sellars customer base.
"We have a very successful online business with RB Sellars so it wasn't new to us to be able to launch into this," she said.
Elliott added that successfully introducing a D2C channel whilst maintaining the brand's strong wholesale partnerships comes down to clear and effective communications.
"The wholesale market is understanding that most brands will also have their direct to consumer outlets, but as long as you keep up the communication with everybody around what you're doing and how you're running your supply chain, it seems to work quite well.
"But it takes time to build an eCommerce business from scratch, particularly with something like footwear, where sizing matters.
"You've got to sort of guess a bit to start with because of a lack of standardisation really across the whole apparel industry.
"But we have seen growth on the site, and it's in the 1,000%, but that's because we're coming off a low base," she said.