Diadora boasts a rich Italian heritage, one full of nostalgia, history, and made-in-Italy designs, going back to the company’s birth in 1948. Not one to live in the past, though, Diadora has brought its made-in-Italy program to the tennis court, crafting the all-new B. Elite Star at the brand’s Italy headquarters and manufacturing facility in Caerano di San Marco. The new on-court offering joins made-in-Italy models for off court, such as the B. Elite and B.560.

The Second Serve’s Tim Newcomb chatted with Bryan Poerner, president and CEO of Diadora USA, on why the made-in-Italy program is important to the family-owned brand, and what makes it unique in the world of tennis.

Why is the made-in-Italy program important to Diadora?
We’ve always done it in soccer and reintroduced it in running three or four years ago. This is our first tennis introduction. The thing that is interesting about what we do is this is not a commercialization strategy of “Let’s sell the most stuff.” Yes, we are competitive and want to sell, but this is more about “How do we actually build the best things?” There are lots of ways to approach this, scientifically and with labs, which we have, but we started thinking that if we want to have this process to come up with the best court shoe—sketching it out, building the compound, stitching it, testing it, adjusting it, testing it again—if we can do that in our home, where designers, the lab, and factory are within 100 meters of each other, there is something there you can’t replace.

It is not a commercial option to have all our shoes built this way, but it is a celebration of how we develop our shoes. It is a celebration of Italian craft, but also what the Diadora design process is.

What is the made-in-Italy B. Elite Star?
The B. Elite Star is a new shoe we developed, and it is the first made-in-Italy technical tennis shoe that we have done in 30 or 40 years. It pays homage to the Bjorn Borg B. Elite, but only in design reference. We paid homage to it but wanted to push the boundaries and made sure it was a badass technical, playable shoe. The B. Elite is one of the most celebrated shoes in our history, so we started from that design language and were figuring out how to modernize. It was really fun.

What makes the B. Elite Star unique?
When people see it, they say, “Oh, it is beautiful.” Because we took this design language from the B. Elite, it is one of the gnarliest all-court shoes that has ever been developed. We just said we are going to build the best hard-court shoe possible, and it wasn’t about reaching a price point. The [midsole] compound we use, the production value of the raw materials, it is the anima—Italian for “soul,” so it has a double entendre—of the shoe but also what makes the shoe special. There is a responsiveness around that. It is 30 percent more responsive with 30 percent more bounce back from impact to return than the next competitive set of shoes. And even with that performance, we got it down to a little more than 12 ounces with all the best materials and a good level of durability. I’m really proud of it. We don’t just make stuff; we try to make the best thing. Made-in-Italy is our best representation.

Will we see the made-in-Italy program expand in performance tennis?
I would love it to, but I don’t know. With the tariff situation, with capacity, with demand, we will see. The demand for our made-in-Italy running product keeps growing, but then it comes down to the actual capacity to build shoes. Do we invest in more factories around Caerano? This is not a mass-production thing. We want all these details to be felt. There are a lot of factors involved, but I will say that the way we have developed shoes for the last 50 years will stay the same.

What are the lifestyle models of the made-in-Italy tennis program we’ve seen?
These are replicas of Bjorn Borg, Boris Becker, Jennifer Capriati, anyone who played in our shoes. Select models of their shoes we still manufacture like we did 30 to 40 years ago. We do small runs for boutiques all around the world. These are one-for-one replicas and are nods to the past.

How does Diadora’s history help it in the tennis space?
The reason I came here in the first place is it is the most amazing brand. It is a family company. Take all the [feats by athletes] away and it is a family company obsessed with providing high-level products to athletes. There is tremendous value in that. The people at this company obsess over the athletes, and how to serve them better is part of every decision we make. How do you give someone not only an advantage in tennis, but an advantage when playing on grass, or on wet grass, or playing doubles on grass? We don’t think about profit and loss when building footwear for Nicole [Melichar-Martinez], a doubles player of ours; we think about how to deliver the best shoe on this day.

Why is tennis important to Diadora?
It is core to what we do. We are not an every-sport brand. We do calcio [Italian for soccer], tennis, and running. Those are the sports we do, and we want to do them super, super well, so we are going to be very focused on driving the best product to market. That is a different approach than a commercialization strategy where you find the opportunities to sell the most stuff. Sometimes they are very commercial, and sometimes they are not.

How is that strategy different?
If you think about it, it is similar to Ferrari. They are thinking about building a race car. That is not a commercialization strategy. They are not building a compact $35,000 car that can maybe get you there, but it isn’t going to be the fastest, hold you the best, or corner the best. We are more concerned with this [high-performance] market, and we can live in this world. It is a different approach than most of our competitors.