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Carpi, the capital of knitwear
Rome - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - The Carpi district (www.carpidiem.it) has almost 2 thousand firms, with a staff of 10,000 and a turnover of EUR 1 billion, half of which accounted for by exports.
Situated a few kilometres from Modena, in the Emilia-Romagna region, it includes five local administrative units (comuni): Carpi, Cavezzo, Concordia, Novi and San Possidonio. This district is home to a network of small or tiny businesses in the textile sector, producing clothes, especially knitwear, largely for export markets.
This is one of the areas where industry started earliest and developed most strongly. Out of a population of about 88,700 there is a workforce of 45,300 with an unemployment rate of 5%. The very high percentage workforce, together with a high level of business initiative, have enabled the local economy as a whole to draw on the skills of all sectors of the population, especially women.
Manufacturing plays a very important part in the local economy. Within manufacturing, since the end of the Second World War, the textile and clothing sector has been predominant. The district's second most important industry is the manufacturing of metal machinery, with over 500 businesses, employing a total of more then 3,400 staff (about 30% of the number working in the sector in the whole of Emilia-Romagna and 12% of the figure for Italy). The local industry specialises in machines for woodwork and agriculture and in automatic machines.
Carpi is at the heart of an industrial centre with a highly specialised workforce. The district is characterized in particular by a high degree of specialization in knitwear (1,600 businesses and 6,400 staff) and clothing (850 businesses, 4,750 staff). Since 1995 businesses starting up and businesses closing down have been equal in number. Business has been buoyant among firms working as sub-suppliers, especially in the knitwear sub-sector, but firms making finished products have long been doing less well.
In addition to their high output (accounting for 6.5% of national turnover in this sector) the local textiles and clothing industry is notable for the originality of its organizational structures, for its well-ordered system of small and tiny businesses operating independently and for its particular pattern of interplay between firms producing finished items and outside firms providing assistance with certain stages in the production process. Many of the major local businesses and brands actually achieve great flexibility by contracting out almost every stage in their production process to outside workshop specializing in particular aspects or phases. They directly carry out only the design, the choice of materials, logistics, quality control, stock-keeping and trade management.
Almost without a manufacturing structure of their own, many businesses are able to grow practically without hindrance and take on new challenges. Carpi is where knitwear and clothing items that are designed and branded by big fashion houses but not actually produced by them get made. The production stage involving the largest number of specialized firms is stain removal followed by sewing and then by the final stages (ironing, checking and packaging).
Carpi is known as the European capital of textiles and clothing, of up-to-date fashion and of Italian-made knitwear and clothing. This district grew out of widespread business initiative, but in the last few years the crisis in the sector has taken its toll. That has driven some firms to relocate either to other places in Italy or, more likely to Hungary, Slovenia, Turkey or the Far East. Among local business leaders the realization has been setting in that the good times of hectic growth are over and that the future lies in alliances, diversification, technological innovation and efforts to win a hold on foreign markets.
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