What do a kind Japanese woman and some skilled Apulian craftsmen have in common? How are Milan and the Salento town of Specchia linked? A passion starting “from below”: shoes. But not a pair like any other: Yuko Matsuzaki designs with the delicacy that is typical of the Land of the Rising Sun shoes that Roberto, Mario and Rocco transform into a pleasure to wear all day long under the brand name Seishou. And in the name of Made in Italy.
A challenge, not just a brand. The whole of 2022 and this first half of 2023 were not easy: the world, Italy, and Lombardy came out of an extremely serious sanitary crisis. The pandemics exposed the nerves of an unprepared healthcare, of emergency plans that were not up-to-date. The repercussions were heavy and they are yet to be dealt with. To this, as if it were not enough already, a war that is becoming endless was added, and it is here, in the West, a stone’s throw from us.
As the “Il Sole 24 ore” daily wrote just a few months ago, a suffering macroeconomic scenario was thus created, burdened with humanitarian and industrial emergencies. Yet, the extra something that the all-Italian talent in knowing and making has, obtained important results such as the growth of exports and the domestic market.
Sturdy and resilient, then, but with a huge problem: inflation. So, what is the solution for the General Confederation of Italian Industry, i.e. Confindustria, and its daily tasks? The strength of the quality of Made in Italy that propels Italian businesses to the top of the purchase choice rankings.
The footwear industry already demonstrated it, as was shown last February in a survey made by the Confindustria Fashion Studies Centre (Centro Studi di Confindustria Moda) for Assocalzaturifici, i.e. the Italian Association for Footwear Businesses: the data came back to their pre-Covid levels, with a 14.49 billion euros turnover in 2022, which is 14% more than 2021, invigorated by exports and luxury products.
Among all this, in an innovative studio in the North and a neat workshop in the South, in an ideal union of the “Country of good living”, works a group of people representing the plastic image of Italian productivity in the 2020s: the kind Japanese woman and the skilled Apulian craftsmen.