Technology and fashion, an inseparable combination. This is what they discussed, al Micam of Milanat the institutional stand of Marche regioninstitutions and sector operators, to promote innovation as a competitive factor on international markets, as part of the conference Digital Fashion.
“We are experiencing moments of great transformation that require strong overall strategies to give our manufacturing new skills that allow us to increase technological innovation and the digitalisation of production processes – highlighted the president Francesco Acquaroli, in the opening speech of the conference – Tools now essential to attack new markets and face the challenges of internationalization. Just as essential are credit-related strategies, necessary for the competitiveness of our manufacturing”.
The president underlined the role that Svem (Sviluppo Europa Marche) is playing “to give support to the territory, the districts and businesses, with planning that also starts from the bottom. The objective is to bring our region out of the transition phase and hook it up to new development models. It is an effort that will be successful if we all work together, institutions and entrepreneurs, as a team to build a united and competitive system.”
L’Councilor for Productive Activities Andrea Maria Antonini underlined how “innovation and digital transition become indispensable for the competitiveness of footwear companies. Through European resources and Pnrr funds we aim to modernize the Marche model: an entrepreneurial fabric made up of many small and medium-sized enterprises with a high content of technical ability and manual skills, to be preserved but always looking at the new challenges of a narrow and competitive international market, in which only the quality and solidity of a company can make the difference”.
Antonini then recalled how the Regional Council is supporting “the growth of the fashion and footwear production segment and of the other strategic sectors of the Marche economic fabric through a program full of interventions, including the first 45 million euro tender of the new 2021 Programming -27 issued last May 10th – and extended to October 16th – which concerns industrial research; first step on a path that must lead our companies to enter the market with innovative and highly competitive products”.
Another soon-to-be-released tender, concluded the councilor, “with a budget of 28 million euros, will finance innovation and product or service diversification projects carried out by SMEs in the Marche region operating in the areas of the specialization strategy, including those of the Fashion system and person. Product innovation in Fashion is today a necessity to cope with growing competitiveness and to undertake the path towards the so-called Twin Transition: a double transition which is the symbiosis, increasingly necessary and requested, between the technological-digital one and the environmental”.
The conference was attended by, among others, the president of Assocalzaturifici Giovanna Ceolini, the regional councilors Andrea Putzu (president of the second permanent council commission for economic development), Mirko Bilò and Marche Marinangeli. At the 96th edition of Micam (at Fiera Milano Rho) there are 94 companies from the Marche region present, mostly coming from the provinces of Fermo and Macerata. In the year 2022 (Source of Istat Coeweb data – Processed by the Marche Region) exports of the footwear and leather goods sector in the Marche region are 32.4% more than the previous year. In the first six months of 2023, exports in the sector grew by 14.8% compared to the same period of the previous year. In 2022 the footwear and leather goods sector exported 6.4% of the amount exported from Italy from the Marche region.
