Italian design firms beat recession by drawing on trusted skills

In the "Glass Cube", an installation by the Tel Aviv-born designer Ron Gilad, set in the grounds of Italian interiors and furniture group Molteni & C in the region of Brianza, there sits a chair that tells a story about the past and the future of "made in Italy" design.

Deceptively simple but a feat of engineering nonetheless, the Alfa chair by Swiss designer Hannes Wettstein is made of two single pieces of fibreglass and resin. The seat and front legs make one part, the back and remaining legs another, and they are slotted imperceptibly together.

It took two years for Wettstein to bring to life the idea he scribbled on to paper in Switzerland - and it only happened after he located craftsmen in northern Italy with the industrial skills to transform his design aesthetic.

The story of the creation of Wettstein's Alfa chair is one that is informing a push at this year's Salone Internazionale del Mobile fair in Milan to draw attention to the value of the manufacturing behind Italian design.

Alongside new examples, houses such as Cassina and the 80-year-old Molteni & C are highlighting Italian design history with re-editions of furniture by maestri such as Gio Ponti - but updated using new materials and eco-friendly textiles. This attention to manufacturing comes after a triple-dip recession that forced many smaller companies to close and resulted in some of Italy's largest design firms being sold to foreigners. Italians, as a result, are examining what sets apart their domestic design industry.

"The idea of 'made in Italy' is important for our buyers because it's a powerful and rich [phrase]," says Francesca Molteni, a member of the Molteni family and founder of the multimedia Muse Project Factory, a "design incubator".

"It means talent and experience in producing good-quality products, but it is also a way of living, full of beauty, elegance and emotion. Passion in making things and living a good life."

Much of this hotbed of design and manufacturing is clustered in Brianza, a semi-rural area half an hour's drive from Milan. Here, more than 20,000 firms are crammed in cheek-by-jowl, giving way to a creative combustion of ideas. The largest among them are Italian design leaders Molteni & C, Cassina, Cappellini, De Padova and B&B Italia.

Since the downturn, mass- and low-quality production has dwindled as hundreds of firms unable to compete with cheaper Chinese manufacturing have shut down. In response, firms in Brianza have focused on premium manufacturing to survive, often drawing on the engineering and design skills they have built up over generations.

A recent report by Milan's Bocconi University suggests many survivors in the Brianza area are entrepreneurs with 100 to 300 employees and revenues of €50m to €150m - midsized firms for Italy, and flexible enough to adapt.

"To survive and grow, flexibility is demanded above all - to the point where a manufacturing worker is today a tailor, capable of creating bespoke solutions to satisfy a client's request," says business journalist Gloria Riva.

And that adaptability has shown. A study of 500 firms in the area by the university and PwC found the economy here is improving, even as Italy's economy as a whole remains stagnant. Total revenues hit €30bn in 2013, up 9 per cent compared with a rise of 3.5 per cent the previous year. Part of that resuscitation has come from the area's family-firm ethos. "Families' attachment to their business is the thing more than any other that has allowed firms to overcome the crisis. The entrepreneur grew up in his business and it was the most important inheritance left by his ancestors. That is why in the years of the crisis they decided to risk, to invest, not to give in to the blows - to seek alternatives to delocalisation and closures," says Andrea Dell'Orto, president of business lobby Confindustria in Monza, the main city in the Brianza area.

Nava Swersky Sofer, an Israeli venture capitalist who has advised Italian start-up groups, told a recent meeting of business leaders in Italy that fostering the country's design industry may help its businesses develop in a technological world where cutting-edge design has become a differentiator.

Aldo Cibic is one of Milan's most noted architects and designers, having co-founded the Memphis group in the 1980s after learning his trade under Ettore Sottsass. "What is incredible is how versatile the Italian craftsmen and artisan industries are. [They are] made by people with a lot of passion, who are not only looking at numbers but love what they do," says Cibic. "You don't find this in New York, London or Paris, but you find it here because it has remained on the periphery [of globalisation]." He argues that Italy's manufacturers, particularly its small craftsmen, have another priority, one that has allowed its top-end furniture makers to achieve their own type of excellence: "Beauty is an issue. Because beauty is not numbers, it is not economy. They are driven by passion for beauty. And beauty is just itself."

It is a view shared by Dario Rinero, chief executive of the Poltrona Frau Group, which includes the Cassina and Cappellini furniture brands in Brianza, and also Poltrona Frau, which manufactures farther south in the rolling countryside of the Marche region.

Here, among fields of grazing cows, overlooked from the west by hilltop villages replete with Renaissance art and with the Adriatic coastline to the east, is the Poltrona Frau factory, which last year was taken over by US group Haworth. Inside, men and women cut, mould and sew leather hides to create designs - from Poltrona Frau's classic Vanity Fair chair to this year's leather-covered Volare bed for the Salone 2015.

Rinero, a former brand manager for Coca-Cola in Italy, articulates an idea gaining traction as the country seeks new growth - and new pride - under its reformist prime minister Matteo Renzi, after economic stagnation and sex scandals under Silvio Berlusconi. "We have been looking for oil for centuries, but I believe our oil is the one we have in us and around us here," he says.

"Our 'oil' is the sense of beauty we have in Italy. Real oil is limited, but I believe our 'oil', if cultivated properly, can last for ever."

Rachel Sanderson is the FT's Milan correspondent

Photographs: Maurizio Rellini/4Corners; Mondadori/Getty Images; Federico Cimino/Alamy; Marka/Alamy

© The Financial Times Limited 2015. All rights reserved.
FT and Financial Times are trademarks of the Financial Times Ltd.
Not to be redistributed, copied or modified in any way.
Euro2day.gr is solely responsible for providing this translation and the Financial Times Limited does not accept any liability for the accuracy or quality of the translation