Filippo Della Valle was a shoemaker at Casette d'Ete, a village in the municipality of Sant'Elpidio a Mare in the Marche, the shoemaking district around Fermo, and the grandfather of Diego and Andrea Della Valle of Tod's. He is remembered as the starting point of the family business: according to English Wikipedia he sewed soles and uppers in the kitchen of the family home before opening a small cobbler's workshop. Forbes describes the business he founded as a small shoe factory set up in the early 1900s.
His workshop remained a craft operation. The independent reference site TheFashionDB notes that no catalogue survives that would allow a signature shoe to be attributed to him, and that his importance lies in passing on the family's working knowledge of leather selection, hand stitching and durable construction. His son Dorino took over his legacy, at first working as a subcontractor for international brands and American department stores, and turned the workshop into a factory; Dorino's son Diego later built the J.P. Tod's brand on it, and the group remains based at Casette d'Ete.
Sources disagree on when the workshop began: English Wikipedia says the late 1920s, Italian Wikipedia the early twentieth century, Milano Finanza 1920, and TheFashionDB says the evidence does not support a precise 1920 date. One Italian obituary of Dorino Della Valle names his shoemaker father as Bernardo, not Filippo. Casadi has not verified Filippo's dates of birth and death.