Today we had a long day of company visits. We started off the day early by waking up at 7:30 so we could leave for our first company by 8:45.

The first of the three company visits today was to a logistics company. At the logistics company we ran into the same problem we had yesterday in that the presenter spoke very little English and Luca had to translate everything for us. During this visit we learned that Italians view online shopping very differently as compared to Americans. I didn’t realize how much more Italians value human interaction and enjoy the shopping experience as compared with Americans who don’t value contact with other humans as much. The differing philosophy about online shopping can be seen in the fact that Italians only do 6% of their shopping online while for Americans it’s around 15%. I also found it interesting how they are set up very similar to Amazon but act as a distributor for the company that makes the product instead of having people buy stuff directly from them like Amazon.

After leaving the logistics company we walked down the road to Sartoria Cavour a tailoring company that makes jackets. At the tailoring company we learned how they make jackets and that they can make 60 jackets a day. The person giving us the presentation also tried to tell us what a proper gentleman should have in his wardrobe and I realized I only have like 3 of the 15 things he listed but I’m pretty sure I’ve got enough nice clothes to allow me to get dressed up when needed.

After the tour of the tailoring company we went to get lunch in a small town where we got to enjoy views of the river and a castle while eating lunch.

After lunch we went on a tour of the Mario Faroni Knitwear Factory where we saw how they produced knit clothing like sweaters. We learned how the designers send them the design and then the programmers put the design onto the computer for the machines to follow. After the designs are made by the machines the pieces are stitched together, cleaned, ironed and packaged for sale by high end designers like Gucci.

After touring the factory we got to see some of the designer’s products which I though were pretty cool. I liked how the designs could be turned inside out and the sweater looked totally different and could be worn in a completely different situation.

After leaving the knitwear factory we traveled back to Milan on the Verona soccer team bus which took a long time because of traffic. After getting to Milan it was raining so we went somewhere close for sandwiches but they were out of bread so we got wraps instead.