From humble roots to industry leading excellence – Stanno’s evolution is born from an absolute passion for innovation.

The story starts in Naples, where talented goalkeeper Stefano ‘Stanno’ Andreotti, the son of a tanner, was standing in for the first team keeper in a very important away game. The conditions were wet and several times the leather ball slipped through his hands, something that didn’t happen in the dryer climate of Naples. Eventually one of these ‘slip ups’ cost his team the game; Stefano felt personally responsible and was determined nothing like this would ever happen to him again.

At this moment the seeds of inspiration were planted.

As a result of his experiences keeping goal in the wet, Stefano designed a kind of fingerless hand glove made up of a piece of leather with two crossed straps, which were fastened around his hands. However, he found that these slipped too much over his hands so he went back to the drawing board and stitched some turned ropes of leather on the outside which gave him a lot more grip – then and there the first pair of leather goalkeeper gloves were born. Later on, Stefano used bits of rubber on the outside improving the grip further and making the gloves resemble more closely the goalkeeper gloves that are used throughout the world today.

Seeing that there was an opportunity to sell these gloves to other goalkeepers he knew, Stefano started a business from his father’s workshop. The production and sales of these hand gloves soon grew into a small-scale industry under the brand name “Standreo” – however, when Stefano found his first agent in France and started exporting the gloves, he was forced to simplify the brand name into the more international sounding ‘Stanno’.

Unfortunately the idea of leather goalkeeper gloves didn’t fully catch on and most keepers decided to play without gloves - Stefano was just too far ahead in his time. Before the 1960s it was uncommon for goalkeepers to wear gloves except under very poor weather conditions when they were just used purely for warmth.

In light of this setback, Stefano changed from the production of gloves to football boots and footballs; all were developed and made in Italy. In the sixties, “Stanno” goalkeeper gloves were brought back into production and today they are some of the most used gloves in the world.

Being a goalkeeper, Stefano always liked to be literally ‘hands on’ - so it would come as no surprise to learn that all the design and product development was managed by Stefano himself, right up until the early eighties. This ‘hands on’ ethos is something Stanno still place great emphasis on today.