TORGIANO, Italy — The Prada Group is increasing its manufacturing footprint in Italy, together with dozens of recent jobs at its knitwear manufacturing unit in Umbria, leaning into “Made in Italy” as integral to the model’s ethos and growing new artisanal expertise to ease the posh group via a generational shift in its workforce.
Prada CEO Andrea Guerra, who was introduced in final yr as a part of the generational change in family-run Prada’s administration, mentioned at an unveiling of the expanded plant Tuesday that the corporate is investing 60 million euros ($65million) in manufacturing this yr.
At Torgiano, Prada has added 30 new jobs this yr, alongside 65 final yr, bringing the workforce to some 220 staff, principally ladies, to create knitwear for the Prada and Miu Miu manufacturers, a key class for the group. The positioning had simply 39 staff when Prada purchased it in 2001.
“For a few years, Torgiano was a small, necessary place, linked to the Umbrian knitwear custom,’’ principally devoted to product analysis and improvement, Guerra mentioned. “Within the final six or seven years, with the extraordinary development in knitwear, we determined to create an all-around industrial hub, including manufacturing to a bolstered R&D heart.
The innocuous low-slung plant, recognized by a easy, small Prada nameplate close to the gate, is on the coronary heart of a community that features dozens of smaller firms that collectively create some 30,000 items of knitwear a month for the worldwide luxurious group. They embrace fairly, pink crocheted Miu Miu culottes to gentle grey Prada cardigans which have develop into a trademark.
Guerra described the Milan-based trend group’s manufacturing footprint in central Italy as a “community of clever relationships and craftsmanship merged with a relentless capability to deliver innovation to the market.”
Prada’s investments to exert higher management over its provide chain stand out in opposition to the backdrop of a current investigation that exposed sweatshop situations in Chinese language-owned factories producing luxurious items for different Italian manufacturers within the Lombardy area, the place the Italian trend capital Milan is positioned. The manufacturing arm of Giorgio Armani has been put underneath receivership as a part of an ongoing provide chain probe.
Prada has targeted on what it calls vertical integration of its provide chain — working with smaller firms, some with only a handful of craftspeople, that present particular, generally distinctive, abilities. For its knitwear operation, Prada works with some 60 smaller firms that it refers to as “companions” or “collaborators.”
“Contractors, subcontractors, that isn’t one thing tied to this world. There are manufacturing phases which are assigned to our collaborators, our companions,’’ Guerra mentioned, including: “The best way I work inside, and the way in which I work outdoors must be the identical.”
Lorenzo Bertelli, advertising director and head of company social duty who’s slated to take over the corporate from his dad and mom Patrizio Bertelli and Miuccia Prada, mentioned a powerful governance is the important thing to avoiding “such incidents.” He credited his father with beginning Prada on the highway to integrating its provide chain within the Nineties.
Audits of suppliers, which have to this point been voluntary, develop into necessary in 2025 underneath the Company Sustainability Reporting laws, aimed toward controlling abuses, mentioned Stefania Saviolo, a trend and luxurious professional at Milan’s Bocconi College. Publicly quoted firms like Prada, that are used to a degree of transparency and reporting, will doubtless have a neater time than others, she mentioned.
Integrating the availability chain doesn’t simply imply {that a} main participant buys up smaller firms, she mentioned, however they might spend money on particular equipment, or assist them safe financial institution financing. “It isn’t possession, it’s a longer transaction alongside the mannequin of partnership,’’ Saviolo mentioned. Such relationships additionally present a way of safety to the smaller firms extra weak to market crashes, she mentioned.
Noting that the posh and trend industries have lengthy relied on third-party manufacturing, Bernstein analyst Luca Solca mentioned the form of investments by Prada to combine manufacturing merchandise in-house “is a form of catch-up with best-in-class-players within the trade.”
A key a part of Prada’s investments are aimed toward securing know-how into the following technology, a transition the corporate has been making ready additionally in its administration and artistic roles.
Discovering new employees with each expertise and keenness is troublesome, even in a area the place knitwear is a part of the native custom, mentioned Lorenzo Teodori, who runs the Torgiano plant.
To fill that hole, Prada runs an inside academy as wanted at its 23 Italian manufacturing websites to coach younger individuals alongside older masters. The following one in Torgiano begins within the fall, with skilled employees coaching the following technology.
“Via the Prada Academy, now we have seen how this dialogue continues to be alive and profitable,’’ Bertelli mentioned. “We’d like it to coach the long run technicians of tomorrow, who in flip would be the academics sooner or later. It’s a elementary cycle for our group.”