How to support the demands of an increasingly hungry and fast-moving market?
This is the question that afflicts the high fashion industry, which survived the pandemic and the economic crisis, but is now forced to deal with a increasingly saturated and difficult to control reality and, especially, increasingly competitive.
Those who can afford it, therefore, run for cover and hope to realize a vertical economic structure, independent of external actors, and, by definition, more closed: in the case of Made in Italy: this happened with the partnership between the Prada Group and Zegna Group, who have acquired the 15% of shares of Luigi Fedeli and Son, an Italian knitwear manufacturer, and which have already in the past allied themselves against the giants of world high fashion, for example dividing up the majority of the shares in the wool and cashmere supplier Biagioli Modesto yarns in 2021; they did the same Chanel e BRUNELLO CUCINELLI with almost the 50% of shares of Cariaggi wool mill, an Italian cashmere supplier already in the Cucinelli sphere.
A double-edged sword, which guarantees on the one hand the independence and protection of the Italian supply chains, on the other hand implies a monopoly of the knitwear sector by a small group of economic players.
At the same time, foreign brands are also investing in Italian realities: in Toscana more and more plants and factories are converting into production headquarters for brands of the LVMH group, a phenomenon that is contributing to clogging up the entire industrial area of the region.
“There is a kind of unofficial competition between the brands to secure new production sites in Italy" explains Rémy Daguillard, founder of the logistics company Stellae International, a Vogue Business. “This opportunity is only accessible to big brands with sufficient resources to invest in their suppliers and ensure efficient production.”
