Today (May 16th) we went back to Milan, but before we did that we went to three companies. Today was a busy day and very exhausting. The first company that we saw was a logistics company similar to Amazon, just Italian. The second company was a tailoring company. The third company was a knitwear factory. All of these factories were part of a larger group of companies that works together to have greater competitive advantage.

Company Number 1:

Like I stated above this was a logistics company. They mostly specialized on moving product from one location to another. While they are like Amazon, they are also very different. They have 54 warehouses over the Italian peninsula while Amazon only has 3. Most of their services are focused on either transporting goods from one location to another or by notifying the customer to the locations to goods. This is very important because due to the nature of Italian shopping. Italians shop mostly in local stores because they want to look at the product. So in order to save the customer time and energy, if they know what they are looking for in a product, they can check the availability online or order it through this company. That was the first site visit.

Company Number 2:

Company number two was a personal tailor shop. This company takes orders from high end retailers and produces suits for them. Although they only produce 60 suits a day. Along with producing for other companies, they also product for individual persons. Since they produce such a low number of suits a day, they can focus on the quality of the product. I can personally attest to the fact that their suits were high quality, but I am pretty sure that all of my readers know that I am not an authority on this issue. What was interesting about this company was that the factory/workshop was completely disorganized. This is just the italian way, “disorganized” which is organized, because the Italians know where everything is.

Company Number 3:

This was by far the most advanced company that we have visited so far. They product knitwear such as cashmere sweaters, scarves, pants, coats and really any article of clothing you can think of. This includes underwear. One of the most impressive things about this factory was the archives. These archives were essentially rooms full of different designs that were made from years past. This was very organized. They used these archives in order to create new designs and styles. A big thing in fashion repetition, apparently the cycle for fashion is about 8 years. This was a nice tour. We also saw things that were similar to other the other factories, but the things that I have listed were the ones that stuck out to me.

After the company visits we took a nice ride back to the Milan. After a long day, it is nice to finally get some rest.