How they are killing Made in Italy is a story that goes on stage every day.
Someone will think that talking about Made in Italy is something abstract.
That's why we have chosen two true stories to tell you what happens in practice.
We tell you about it from the control room of what we once called the “Italian locomotive”.

From that north-east cloaked in myth, by now, more than by the glories that are still narrated as coma when at Christmas the grandparents handed down legends of ancient times to their grandchildren.

Under a finger of dust, memories; even more under the old heart of the small and dwarf enterprise, the backbone and true economic backbone of the country.
Yes, the famous and much deprecated micro enterprises that everyone talks about, usually badly, without having ever worked on them. Sometimes without ever having worked anywhere.

Goodbye Made in Italy

September 2020. The lock down is an experience already tested with catastrophic effects on production (consequently to the obvious stop in consumption).
In the previous article EVERYTHING WILL BE OK (?) Of which this is the natural continuation, we had described in advance how things would have turned out and now we are.

What we are talking about is a company that produces some important Italian high fashion brands. About fifty employees. They are all in layoffs except one.

He is the storekeeper who wanders around in the silence where only the noises of the forklift he is maneuvering distract him from his thoughts made of astonished contemplation of the abyss.

Italy is not going away; she's already gone. For many years now.
Those who are left are the Italians. Some good people, not bad people. It is these, which still produce real value, that we are saying goodbye for the last time.

I was talking about the storekeeper.

Who knows, maybe officially in layoffs: because if not, it is not explained what he does in a closed company.
The other forty-nine employees are cashing in for sure.

He goes back and forth with the excuse of tidying up a bit. What then?
Perhaps he is right there because no one ever thought of keeping a guard dog at the gate.
And now, behind closed doors, who would have time to bring him food?

He struggles through the corridors of the warehouse and walks the solitude from one shelf to another, both looking for something to do.

“This season they will only produce our own brand and another. All other brands will not be produced, so we will not find them in stores. If all goes well, ours will lose 20% of turnover. A boon these days, when those who have not closed their doors are recording losses of 30-40-50%.
Meanwhile, large and medium brands are already on the market for the price of a tobacco pipe. Foreigners are buying them on the balance of the made in Italy that still survived before the covid.

The owner of the company has suspended all the other product lines and put everyone on layoffs, until we pass them our drawings to make our line (already much smaller than usual, to cope with the crisis).
Then someone will come back for a few weeks.

By doing so, he was able to close his credit lines and cancel the insurance on shipments abroad.
A nice saving that will allow him to close the budget even. Him. Employees, who knows. ”.

This is the bare and terse summary of NC, in full style of the disillusioned Venetian, used to always expecting worse even on the best days, and therefore without illusions but with a lot of hair on the stomach.
She too, always at the forefront of the high fashion branch, has been feeling a headwind for a couple of years.
Everyone around here feels it.
And it is no longer the stern wind or rather, the breeze coming through the windows of that locomotive launched at full speed of the eighties and nineties.
Those who tell us the small-big cross-section of reality, a true mirror of the real situation, come from environments that the whole world has put in their closets, even before Renzo Rosso, Mr. Diesel, took over the whole hut.

Thiene (upper Vicenza) the historic center is invaded by empty shop windows. Courtesy of the author: Flavio Vezzaro.

CHRONICLES FROM ABOVE VICENTINO

The second testimony comes to us from the home of Marzotto, Lanerossi and Diesel

Vicenza, November 2020, Trissino is on the way to Recoaro . In between is Valdagno. There Marzotto was born , of which today remain the vestiges of immense production centers that seem to never end, whatever the dimension towards which you look. In these parts, Lanerossi invented the electric blanket and was the first company in the world to put its logo on the shirt of a football team.
In short, they were people who saw far away.

Today, making jeans and almost everything else, there are only Chinese workshops. They are all people who have learned the trade. That is, we taught him.
It must have started when some of our people saw China as an opportunity to make low-risk business money.
Now everyone tells you that globalization is to blame, but before, I say before globalization, but even before the fall of the Berlin Wall, there were those who had seen in the yellow monkeys (to indicate the underlying contempt) a nice sum.

So what have we done? We went there, thinking they were all stupid, and we made them produce the “made in Ital i “. To fools.
And since they were stupid, in our opinion, unable to go beyond the imposed order and step-by-step instructions, we taught them to slavishly copy what we used to make our craftsmen do before.
We started with small details of garments or machinery and then we moved all the production to China and, if anything, we kept the details for our craftsmen. Useful ones; because we have sent the redundant ones for a walk.
But since the Chinese are not stupid, if they ever pretend, they may not have creativity, but they are awake as crickets and are hungry for redemption and then there are many, and today they know how to do Made in Italy.
Indeed, they have colonized all the Marche, Veneto and Tuscany, so they make the real thing made in Italy. Because they reside here. And woe to them if they go!

If made in Italy is dying it is also for this reason. But it's not the only gift that comes to us from China.

From made in Italy to made in Italy, Chinese to conquer

They always work like machines. But just put one at his heels always with the gun pointed and see how they produce. Perfect.
Maybe they drive you crazy, because they only know how to copy. They pass over everything, going straight ahead even over an error that an Italian would see or in front of which doubt would arise, and then correct it while production is launched and quick solutions must be found.
Instead the Chinese pulls yarn straight like a spindle and then if there was a design error, it's your cock.

But do you want to save by hiring only the guy who holds the gun, instead entire departments of workers to be paid because they are rare and against balls?

“About a year ago we started to create a new brand of competamante made in Italy clothing. The idea is based on the study of a public niche of which we ourselves are part of the fans of certain couple dances. We too were carried away and then inspired by the period between the twenties and forties – like them – and by that vintage that our audience likes so much.

We have managed to recreate a style that was completely forgotten and we believe we have filled a large gap in the market.
Before, true enthusiasts had to find the necessary for the outfit in the flea markets, if they were lucky enough to find the right garment for their size and how they liked it. Today our brand is able to offer items in style with the era and which bring to light a whole culture that derives from the New York slums.
What in marketing jargon is our buyer persona is right there in the middle. We have it! We have identified the tastes, the style and we have traced a profile cut out on our garments and vice versa.

We have built a solid business plan, but not for bank loans. Here in Veneto, the more banks stay away from business and household savings, the happier we are. In our research we have collected so many elements that we can feel quite confident that the product will work. We also did some little market research and did our own tests.
We have even been selected by the organization of the largest national event in the industry, which attracts tens of thousands of fans of lindy hop, boogie-woogie, etc. to the gathering every year. of all the world. Our buyer personas in fact.
And we have been selected on the basis of a mini sample and all the work done to tell our project. That's all. Without having produced a single garment.
How did we do it? With a bit of work. We were able to tell our idea and let the imagination of our contacts do the rest.

Until then, we had built the sample collection by relying on a small Italian studio that deals with the prototyping of sample garments located in the upper Vicenza area.

One year to find an Italian laboratory in the land of Marzotto, Lanerossi and Diesel

It took us almost a year to find an Italian workshop with Italian craftsmanship that would give us a hand in creating the actual collection.
It is the only one left in the area. They are good people who have gone out of their way to deliver what we call, our creations.
Jeans experts, they had to work hard to succeed in what we asked them: dedication, precision and above all to get out of their technical-cultural shell and immerse themselves in our mood dating back to a hundred years ago.
Not really a thing. And we are grateful to him.

We selected fabrics that were up to par. Most come from old forgotten shops in the villages of the province. This is also all Italian stuff. The only exception is denim and two types of cotton, Japanese. In short, we have focused on quality

So today we have our first collection and they are all 100% made in Italy garments, made by completely Italian workers : we have reached a goal pursued with stubbornness at the price of repeated postponements.
Even our buttons are made in Italy . We have built our own small collection to take to events.
And we are proud of the small contribution we are trying to make to the local economy.

Today we are very satisfied but we are gripped by two truly enormous unknowns.
The first concerns when fans will be able to meet again in large numbers. Here the dance schools are all closing, there are families who risk ending up in the middle of the street and also with heavy aftermath. Someone had a mortgage with which he was buying the space in which he had realized his dream of opening his own school.

The fabric of once very close relationships is dying.

Our project is to build our reputation in the field, not fattening up Mark Zuckerbergh's company. Because when you are a stranger, the public, if they know how to recognize the quality and value of what they buy, wants to touch what you are able to do.
Social media marketing doesn't work here. Much less at the stage we are in now.

Even on social networks we walk at a minimum regime so as not to burn our papers as long as we are unknown.

We just have to postpone, but what will be left to work?

We have postponed the opening of our online shop. For the moment we rely on an external portal, just to show that the product can be purchased.
On social media we have set the regime to a minimum so as not to burn the arguments before people can get to know us. We are trying to address communication knowing that the product, the people who cannot meet, will never buy it.

We do not know what will remain of all that movement that had built up over the years.
They are killing everything with terrorism, which seems to be done only for the benefit of those who sell advertisements in online newspapers.

The second unknown concerns the laboratory that accompanied us until the creation of the collection. During these months he only stood up thanks to our order. Without it it would have remained closed and the employees would have remained in layoffs all the time.
We are talking about a few leaders, for heaven's sake. We are a start-up. But so be it.

It is not easy to hear the owner ask you every time you meet her to discuss the collection: "if she heard of a need, I dislike it, that here no ghe xe laoro …" Every time with ellipses that do not suggest nothing good.
My heart tightens.
We cannot afford to miss this opportunity. We wish we could continue growing with them.
And we don't want to be forced to make made in Italy. We don't care. ".

( source )

This is the story of CR.

The knock-on repercussions on the real economy

Made in Italy is dying. It's the classic tyrannosaurus in the living room. We pointed this out to you in the previous article entitled: “ Everything will be fine ”. Perhaps not everyone who has read it has noticed it, but the message was rather direct, although it was sweetened in tone.
In that article we find rather accurate forecasts and a few months ahead of today.

We believed that God would protect us, but the Pope raised his hands and told us to put ourselves in the hands of the government.
That one told us the fairy tales of the firepower series and then we had to go saucer in hand to Europe.
And what did they answer us? “Do you want the money? Cut off public services first. "

Quite right! Quite right.

What else should be up to a people clinging to the balconies of their homes with the only reaction they are capable of: turning on votive heaters (but if they've already told you that God has other things to think about …) and flashmob while singing popular songs?

What have been the concerns of Italians in recent years and months?

Rich gifts from China

We have talked to you about the future in which corporations will not only count more than States (as already today), but will become States themselves to which we will decide to join depending on the discount card that we will carry in our pocket or the ownership of the currency of one or the another brand that we will use to pay.

We are getting there and leading us are the shepherds of the flocks.

The article I'll tell you how "Made in Italy" is being killed comes from ScenariEconomici.it .

This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/vi-racconto-come-stanno-ammazzando-il-made-in-italy/ on Thu, 15 Oct 2020 07:29:34 +0000.