We recently connected with Samuel Koza and have shared our conversation below.

Samuel , thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Naming anything – including a business – is so hard. Right? What’s the story behind how you came up with the name of your brand?

The name ‘Endrizzi’ is my great grandparents’ name on my mother’s side. Guido and Constantine Endrizzi immigrated to Ellis Island in New York in the early 1900s and made their way to Milwaukee and Chicago where many Italian immigrants landed during the industrial time period in the United States due to unionized railroad jobs and metropolitan expansion. 

My wife , Jessica,and I had always wanted to be in the fashion industry. We spent our early years together attending fashion shows and investing in fashion week parties, which was a lot of fun. Our dream though was to produce a product that could eventually find its way onto those same catwalks and potentially beyond. 

During the pandemic, we had a lot of time to ourselves like many other people out there. We also own WarPaint International Beauty, which is an on-site hair and makeup artistry company. We had zero revenue for almost a year so we spent our time brain-storming alternative business ideas to satisfy the e-commerce space that our intimate services company did not fulfill. 

After doing multiple rounds of idea brainstorming and writing various names down on paper and sketching out potential logo ideas, we decided to pay homage to my family history and tie my Italian roots back in. My grandmother (Amabalé Endrizzi) is a first generation Italian American. My mother was one of four children to my grandmother. I am a 3rd generation Italian American on my Mother’s side. Both of my great-grandparents came to the United States from a village called Cavedago in the mountainous region of  Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol (Northeastern Italy).

At this point, we aligned with our long-time friend, Nancy Stoltz, who had made the decision to step away from her career during the pandemic. Nancy has a background in design and fashion and she had interest in building the brand with us. Today, the company is small and family-owned by the three of us and the support of our manufacturing partners in Florence, Italy. 

Italy is the world leader in leather processing and handbag design, so it was a natural fit to keep this brand close to my heart by bringing our Italian heritage in and manufacturing our products 100% in Italy. 

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I had previously answered the question as to how we got into the business of handbags. A love of fashion, a pandemic response with time to think and grow, and a heritage that ties memories to my Italian roots. But how did we navigate the building of the brand and our products? 

One of the things that needed to be accurate and 100% true about our brand is that it will be made in Italy. Marketing is an interesting topic that we really had to discuss for a long time in order to make some hard decisions. We had to address the question “Is it really important to build our products in Italy or can the story be told in some other way?” We decided the only correct answer was that Italian-branded goods are made in Italy only – by our own personal standards. There are major luxury fashion brands out there that are associated with being Italian or French or Spanish, but when examined closely they are largely produced in Asian countries. The cost of production is lower and oftentimes publicly held brands have investment requirements to produce a certain percentage of their goods in lower-cost production countries. Italian guidelines speak to a specific percentage of a good being made in Italy in order to make the same claim publicly. Brand power and personal preference will also dictate their success, and emotional responses to brands and design will also prevail. But the country of production of origin may not be entirely as it seems. 

Does this make Endrizzi better or worse than other brand options? Neither… A high-quality product is a high-quality product and a cheaply-made product is nothing more than a cheaply-made product no matter where it is made. In our industry, this is one of the small problems we are proud to solve for those that care to purchase a brand that is steadfast in its commitment to offering 100% Italian-made leather goods. From our personal biased point of view, we think they are of the highest quality. A product, that if properly taken care of, will wear and gain natural beauty over time. 

Not only are our products made in Italy, but they are also handmade in Florence. Our manufacturer is squarely in the middle of the textile industry in Florence, Italy. When visiting our manufacturing partner’s facility this past October, we walked around the corner into a room where older Italian men and women were still practicing their craft of cutting and sewing leather. Placing hardware by hand and sewing seams by hand. Sections of the handbags that require two or more layers of leather and material pressed together for sturdiness and longevity are literally glued, pressed, and fed through a curing machine by hand – not mechanized. It’s so inspiring to watch a process such as building textile materials be done in the old-world tradition of doing it slowly and with perfect measure. Inspecting each piece, one by one.

Even in the historic city center of Florence, one must be careful. Leather vendors will be everywhere – in shops, on street corners, in markets, etc. They are selling “Florentine leather” because they are in Florence and so are you… But many of those vendors import their goods from China or other Asian mass production facilities. You may notice they simply pull a rolling gate over their booth at night to go home regardless of weather or temperature. A detrimental environment for top-grain products that can potentially take on various smells and humidity.

Our leather, our hardware, and our handbags are made by the same people taking care to produce other brands such as Roberto Cavalli, Tom Ford, Louis Vuitton, Jean Paul Gaultier, and even items such as dust bags for Mac Cosmetics. People will get to know us in time – our designs and our product offering will expand in the future as we grow. 

Do you sell on your site, or do you use a platform like Amazon, Etsy, Cratejoy, etc?

Endrizzi handbags can currently be found almost entirely on modaendrizzi.com (our website). The business concept was always an e-commerce business model. The idea of opening a boutique and taking on a commercial lease and operating expenses seemed daunting and a bit futile in a modern-day environment of retail store closures with the growth of online sales. 

There are pros and cons. We’re a team of 3 people – myself, my wife, and our business partner Nancy. While we collectively put capital and experience into the brand, we are definitely very small. Having a storefront could potentially drive more people to find the brand. But the expense of having that storefront, potentially in the wrong place, can not overcome the freedom and flexibility of being a self-contained e-commerce brand. Our products do not drop ship from Italy. Our manufacturer ships our products to us – we stock them locally and ship them directly to our customers. 

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Our most successful sales strategy so far has been our website and our home shopping experiences, specifically in the Reno Nevada area. The handbags are being shown to customers that are coming for a fun happy hour at someone’s home where the hostess is showing the bags, talking about them, and letting guests use them during the evening. 

We also have found some boutique accounts and are slowly getting the handbags in front of more shoppers looking to accessorize their wardrobes. Stay tuned as we may offer a single, special edition handbag very soon. 

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.modaendrizzi.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/houseofendrizzi/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/modaendrizzi/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/moda-endrizzi/
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/modaendrizzi
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@modaendrizzi
• Other: Trust Pilot Reviews https://www.trustpilot.com/review/modaendrizzi.com

Image Credits
The professional image of walking across the street was taken by Block Portrait Studios in Minneapolis. The rest are taken by us.