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Just over a month ago, at the beginning of December, the Pattern group presented the four-year program 2024-2027 for the strengthening of its industrial centers through important investments on various fronts.
The strategy of CEO Luca Sburlati
«We consider the reconstruction phase of the Italian supply chain through the concentration of excellent companies to be concluded, we think that now the urgency is to bring manufacturing, technical and product development, skills back to the center – explained Luca Sburlati, CEO of the group Pattern –. We will do this with investments in Italian industrial districts of excellence, both at an infrastructural level and in human capital and technologies, with the aim of strengthening the production capacity of Made In Italy. In fact, we can no longer think of outsourcing key processes, even in part – added Sburlati, touching on the issue of the mismatch between job supply and demand -. Just as it is now essential to activate structured training programs to replace an entire generation that will reach retirement in the coming years.”
Investments and expansions
The plan envisages the doubling, with an additional 2 thousand square meters, of the current headquarters of Zanni (Reggio Emilia), a company in the Emilian knitwear hub specializing in seamless knitting, and the inauguration, in spring 2024, of the new building by Idee Partners (Scandicci), a leading Tuscan company in the leather goods sector, which will thus reach a total of 4 thousand square meters with the complete renovation of a former feed mill. Both new buildings will be equipped with a photovoltaic system which will make the companies almost completely independent from an energy point of view. Again in 2024, Central-Southern Italy will see the start of construction of a new 4,000 square meter factory in the Abruzzo headquarters of Dyloan Bond Factory (Chieti), a leader in the production of semi-finished products and high-tech processes. Finally, 2025 will be the year of the inauguration of the group’s new headquarters in Turin (above, rendering of the building), where the parent company Pattern, leader in the engineering and prototyping of outerwear, will move. An area of 22 thousand square meters and a headquarters of over 5 thousand square meters organized on three levels, equipped with green areas, relaxation areas, gym and baby parking, completely self-sufficient from an energy point of view thanks to an internationally certified photovoltaic and geothermal system Leed.
People and training
The infrastructural development plan will be supported by a training program that aims to introduce new figures within a sector, that of manufacturing, which will be strongly affected by the generational turnover of the next 4-7 years. The Pattern group aims to this has already established an internal academy, which involves all the companies of the Group, and which, in 2022-2023, saw the activation of around ten training courses for various professional figures, involving around 100 young people, with a rate of intake of almost 50%. «An extraordinary success that disproves those who say that there are no longer any young people interested in traditional Italian professions», underlined Sburlati. Added to this is a program of continuous updating of internal know-how, which led to the activation, in 2022-2023, of 30 courses for employees on topics ranging from 3D to emotional intelligence, up to the ESG area.
The strength of technological innovation
The third point of the group’s four-year plan is represented by a further investment in technologies, especially through D-house Laboratorio Urbano – Innovation Lab, based in Milan – which will increasingly become a catalyst for collaborations and synergies with the most important international partners, including outside the world of fashion, leaders in the field of technological production, materials and manufacturing. D-house Laboratorio Urbano also inaugurated its new headquarters in the autumn of 2023 in one of the central districts of Milanese creativity: the former Richard Ginori factory in the Navigli area.