Today all we had planned was a visit to the Verona Consortium. The Verona Consortium has around 40 different companies in the consortium and works with about 100 companies. Something that really stood out to me about the companies was that they are actually very small, and I could see this a lot when we went on different company visits. Many of the companies are family run and only consist of about 20-50 employees, which is something I don’t personally see much at home. We were also told that the companies being family run sometimes poses issues for the whole consortium. There is sometimes poor organizational structures in the respective companies, and because they are family run they sometimes just hand over control of the companies to their family, instead of whoever is the most qualified. This creates problems for the consortium because they need every company to be running smoothly, because they are all interconnected.

It was also interesting to me how proud they were for all of their companies to only be Italy based. They are proud of their international presence, yet they won’t allow companies into the consortium that are not based and produce in Italy. They said they want everything they produce to read ‘Made in Italy’ and I think it’s really cool to see that sense of pride for local production.

After the company visit, we were free for the entire afternoon which I really enjoyed because we had a full day to get to enjoy all of Verona. We got lunch, and then the entire group went to a beach near the castle to watch the beautiful sunset of the river. It was amazing to be able to see the sunset with the Alps in the background, with our whole group taking pictures and having a lot of fun together.