Cressi’s history as a Genovese family company is inseparable from the evolution of modern scuba diving. Founded in 1946, the company has spent decades designing equipment shaped by real diving experience, family leadership, and a deep connection to the sea.
The Cressi Story explores the brand’s origins, milestones, and philosophy, including the innovations that have influenced generations of divers. It also serves as home for 80th anniversary content, archival stories, and reflections on how past experience continues to inform present-day design.
This is where Cressi’s legacy meets its future, told through the lens of scuba gear, diving culture, and time spent beneath the surface.
By Cressi Editors|Published June 17, 2026|Updated July 02, 2026
Recreational scuba diving and Cressi are almost exactly the same age. Jacques Cousteau and Émile Gagnan patented the Aqua-Lung in 1943. Cressi was formally established in Genoa in 1946. The two histories have been tangled ever since, with Cressi contributing gear, ideas, and innovations to nearly every decade of scuba’s development. This is that story, told through the products that made a difference. Before Cressi: Two Brothers and a Workshop in Genoa (Late 1930s) The story starts before Cressi...
By Cressi Editors|Published June 10, 2026|Updated June 11, 2026
In the late 1930s, Egidio Cressi left a career in banking to spend his time closer to the sea. He and his brother Giovanni Battista, known as Nanni, had grown up in Genoa, a port city on the Ligurian coast where the relationship between people and the water runs deep and practical rather than romantic. They were not dreamers building a brand. They were two men who liked being in the water and found that the equipment available to...
By Rebecca Strauss|Published February 16, 2026|Updated June 05, 2026
Some companies arrive after a sport is already established, but Cressi grew up with one. That’s what makes an anniversary like this worth celebrating. Eighty years after Cressi was formally established in Genoa in 1946, we are still family-owned, still rooted in Liguria, and still building gear for people who want to spend as much time in the water as possible. We are now a third-generation business, run by Antonio and Marco Cressi, and still guided by the same values...