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ITALIAN GLASSES ALSO LAUNCHED IN CHINA
Rome - (Ign) - It is said that the first to discover that curved glass could help in observing objects close-up and in writing were the Arabs, towards the end of the 8th century. Also in China, according to the tales of the first European merchants in the 12th century, some people used to look through slightly deformed glasses, with some benefits for eyesight. But it is not until the 13th century that we find the world's first real shop selling glasses, in Venice. It seems almost a result of natural selection that the first pair of lenses specifically designed to improve vision should be produced here, in the leading centre of glass production. But the fact that not far from Venice, in the Cadore region, the world's most important glasses industry (www.anfao.it) would emerge and develop 600 years later is perhaps pure coincidence, or a joke of history. The ball was set rolling by a certain Angelo Frescura. He sold glasses in Padova, and in 1878 decided to go back to his hometown, Calalzo di Cadore, to set up, together with his brother and a friend, a small factory producing frames for glasses. His friend was Giovanni Lozza, who became one of the world's most important producers of glasses. Five years later, the three partners bought an old mill, in the place where today stand the headquarters of Safilo. Subsequently, Lozza's children bought new land and grew further. By 1933 there were seven Italian companies producing glass frames, all based in the Cadore region, who alone accounted for half of European production.
Today, those companies have grown, some have joined together, and others have been transformed into large multinationals. At present there are five businesses with over 70 trademarks and dozens of associated companies and branches spread throughout the world, realising, together with another 200 small and very small producers, almost a third of all the glasses made in the world. It is now true to say that these objects, which have increasingly become part of everyday life and changing lifestyles, now stand alongside other representative Italian products in the world, such as fashion, sports cars and speciality foods. These are Italian glasses: unique in terms of design and popularity with consumers, and unique in terms of quality and technological content, unaffected by mass production.
This is a success built over decades, step by step, but which has assumed enormous dimensions in recent years. Between 1993 and 2003 the turnover of the Italian glasses industry in fact rose, in current values, from less than 1000 to around 2000 million euros per year, jobs in Italy from 12,000 to around 18,000, and exports from an already remarkable 70% to 81%. And that's not all: by taking over huge numbers of producers spread throughout the world, the major Italian brands now cover, directly or indirectly, almost half of the world market. The market share held by the Italian glasses industry is now 55% in Europe, 30% in America and almost 15% in Asia. Even in China, the second largest producer of frames after Italy, the presence of Italian products is beginning to make itself felt, with a market share of around 1%, but which is destined to grow in the near future, also by virtue of an increasingly important presence of Italian glasses at all the Chinese trade fairs in the sector. Moreover, thanks to the organisational contribution of the Italian Institute for Foreign Trade, Italian companies from this year on have also decided to launch themselves on what will become the largest market in the world.
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