Today was full of company visits. Our first visit was to a logistics center that attempts to integrate the logistics of e-commerce with in-store retail. This type of operation is particularly necessary in Italy because of multiple cultural factors. Italians enjoy the experience and the challenge of shopping in local stores, so by delivering goods to local stores for pick-up the logistics center takes advantage of this habit. They also almost always live in small towns with small shops in them, making this type of e-commerce popular and logistically simple. As someone who has toured multiple distribution centers recently, it was interesting to compare these operations to American transportation logistics. The main difference I found was that their operations attempted to integrate brick and mortar operations and customer service with e-commerce, as opposed to American e-commerce which is traditionally a largely separated project from in-store sales, often bring handled by different companies entirely. It was interesting to see how this company that shares so many parallels with Amazon adjusted its business model to reflect Italian culture.

Our next company visit was to Sartoria Cavour, a tailoring company that works in small volumes (under 60 suit jackets a day) but the company worked for much larger brands like Ralph Lauren. I found it interesting the way that older styles of tailoring had integrated themselves into newer mass production formats. Italian culture specifically allows for this due to their desire for unique and customized clothing, which can easily be provided by a tailor. This trend is less prevalent in America, which also does not have the history with the tailoring profession that exists in Italy, which is why this type of company does not often survive in America.

Our third and final company visit was to the MF1 knitwear factory, which produces knitted products for larger brands such as Gucci. Again, the relationship between smaller, more creatively focused and old fashioned companies work with larger marketing operations to form a brand with a reputation for high quality. We were able to see programmers working to transfer designs into knitting patterns, and watch machines that were knitting pieces which were assembled and given tags in-house. During this tour the company stressed upon us the importance of made in Italy, the reputation of which forms a brand for all of these smaller operations found in the region.