What we found out

Project objectives Tweet

The project has the specific objective of expanding the commercial relations of the company "Ulisse Fashion art & details" based in Carpi in the European fashion sector, with a focus on France and Germany. The general objective, on the other hand, is to expand the Italian fashion market at a European level.

Foreseen activities

The company "Ulisse Fashion art & details" was involved in investing European funds through fashion fairs aimed at sponsoring the company beyond the Italian borders. More precisely, the fair is an opportunity for the company to meet and advertise (i.e. a chance to find potential new customers) always accompanied by a precise back office work. The project funded the Paris fair, Modamont, held in February 2019, during which the company received a higher number of visits, but fewer requests for samples than the Paris fair held in September 2018. The samplings, although they were less than the visits, were requested by various European countries, in particular France and Germany, which means that the fair brought the desired results from the intent of the project. The project financed the 2019 Paris fair for a total of 14,779.65 euros (cohesion resources). In addition, the owner of the same company has self-financed for a total of 48,022 euros (on the open cohesion website the financing is indicated as Other resources - Private). The participation in a fair, in general, costs around 35,000 euros. During the interview with the owner of the company we had the confirmation that Modamont 2019 was the last fair they attended before the start of the pandemic. Modamont is one of the most important fashion and design accessories fairs with more than 250 exhibitors (this information is also available on the Ulisse company website https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ulissefashion.com/milano-unica-dal-10-07-al-12-07-milano/&ved=2ahUKEwiotI-_k-j9AhXHSfEDHVheAfIQFnoECBwQAQ&usg=AOvVaw04gk2W-PKIX3_-l2ENffn9). All the preparation and the subsequent phases, including transportation for travel, accommodation for company employees, stand construction, of the fair were financed by the monitored project.

Project origin

The monitored project was born with the intention of expanding the businesses of the company "Ulisse Fashion art & details" towards the European market. The project is funded by the POR FESR EMILIA-ROMAGNA to respond to this specific objective: Increasing the level of internationalisation of production systems. The program aims to boost innovation by improving the regional system of R&D; contribute to achieving the Europe 2020 targets for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth and promote private and public investment on research while supporting innovation and productive investments in line with the regional smart specialisation strategy (RIS3). Finally, the program will contribute to improve the energy efficiency of the region as well as to promote the diversification and competitiveness of SMEs (https://ec.europa.eu/regional_policy/in-your-country/programmes/2014-2020/it/2014it16rfop008_en).
The procedure that gave rise to this project is POR FESR 2014-2020 - AXIS 3 "COMPETITIVENESS AND ATTRACTIVENESS OF THE PRODUCTION SYSTEM", ACTION.3.4.1. APPROVAL "CALL FOR EXPORT PROMOTION PROJECTS FOR NON-EXPORTING COMPANIES AND FOR THE PAR. The typology of this procedure is Announcement.

Beneficiaries

The people who can take advantage of the results of the project are certainly all the employees including the owner of the Ulisse company and the customers who rely on the Ulisse company. The first ones will benefit from higher earnings and much more prestigious and relevant orders and consequently also a higher salary. On the other hand the customers will have more choices because the company can afford to expand the range of products offered on the market. The aforementioned customers belong both to the Italian fashion market but above all to the European fashion market, towards which the objective of the Ulisse SRL project is oriented. Finally, even the citizens of the city of Carpi will suffer positive consequences from this type of expansionist policy at a European level as the textile sector of the city will be able to benefit from greater prestige and boast a market that goes beyond the Italian borders. In general, Ulisse offers a range of products suitable for all ages and people which means that regardless of the export of its products to Europe, it has always offered "inclusive" products on the market; It is also important to specify that Ulisse offers a unique fashion accessory brokerage and sales service throughout Italy which means that the company we have examined has no rivals that could possibly be excluded or damaged by the project: we can therefore to affirm that through this project no category of people is excluded.

Context

The textile sector of the city of Carpi from 1900 was of great importance in the production and export of artisanal products related to fashion (accessories, fabrics, clothes, details of clothes such as buttons, pins or epaulettes...). Nowadays due to various financial crises but also the intervention of cheaper multinationals (few suppliers of lower quality but cheaper products) the carpi textile has lost about 85% of the Italian and European demand which caused an extreme decrease of the industries and the people employed in the field. The goal is therefore to recover the value and popularity that carpi had in the past, making sure that our city, which is still able to offer products of great quality and precision, is back to being a point of reference and a representative of Italian fashion through export to Europe and worldwide. The company we have examined, which today is unique throughout Italy so that it has no kind of economic rival, is proposed as a representative of our territory in order to achieve this goal: the funds used to carry out the various investments are partly from Europe, but derive mainly from a self-financing of the owner of the company, which is why we can say that the same company, as a private company and supported by self-financing, is the complement of this project.

Progress

Based on the interview we addressed to the owner and administrative representative of the company "Ulisse Fashion Art & details" during our monitoring visit, we can state that the money provided to him by European funds was fully invested in the year 2019 at the Paris fashion fair, which took place in February: this means that although the results that that fair could have yielded have been slightly attenuated by the various difficulties deriving from the pandemic situation of the covid-19, the project is considered to all intents and purposes concluded. The results that the company has obtained through this specific fair that we have been able to verify through specific private reports provided to us exclusively for our statistical investigation by Marco Cipolli who is the administrative and economic representative of the company's fairs.
The project is now considered officially concluded: our team has in fact had the opportunity to do an interview with the owner of the company, who confirmed to us that the Emilia-Romagna cohesion policy managers have personally dealt on October to check and verify the correct use of the funds allocated to the company and the results that the latter actually yielded: they confirmed the correct conclusion of the project and an effective investment method which led to the achievement of the desired results.

Results

The project monitored by us has achieved its intended objective: to exploit the funds allocated by Europe through an investment aimed at fashion fairs to spread the name of "Ulisse fashion art & details" throughout Europe and beyond. It can therefore be said that the project was effective in each of the objectives it had set itself.
The project has brought the small town of Carpi into contact with the European fashion market. The company "Ulisse fashion art & details" has given voice to fashion made in Carpi long disappeared from the horizons of the textile industry.

Risks

First of all, a factor that could endanger the effectiveness of the monitored project is the lack of future European cohesion policies which, through funding, facilitate the continuity of the same: when the latter fail, the company taken into examination would suffer from serious limitations in terms of economic resources which would prevent it from prolonging the objective of broadening its horizons outside Europe, especially in times of crisis. considering the fashion context in which the "Ulisse" company operates, another possible risk factor could be the total collapse of the western textile industry which has already been put into serious crisis by the eastern one which offers much more economically advantageous products, which, although of lower quality in terms of materials and product aesthetics, attract customers and direct them towards an increasingly cheaper market: in this case, a chain effect would be created for which Western companies, forced to pay a higher rate of labour, they have to continually raise the price of the product as demand drops and potential buyers stop buying these products due to the increase in price; the consequence is that while the larger and more stable companies will simply find themselves in difficulty, the smaller ones will be forced to go bankrupt, the phenomenon will increase until the number of textile industries is drastically reduced. Finally, considering that the fashion horizon is always in continuous evolution, the company we have examined is forced to keep up with these changes to avoid being cut off from the market: a simple choice in disagreement with the trends of fashion could be relevant in causing huge losses for the company which is why it has to pay a lot of attention to these details.

Results and Impact of the monitoring

Investigation method

How was the information collected?

• Web research
• Visit to the project's location, documented by pictures or videos
• Interview with people responsible for the project's planning
• Interview with other types of people

First of all we met Davide Berti, a journalist who works for the Gazzetta di Modena: on 26 January he directed us in the design and production of the newspaper article requested during the second phase of the project. During the second training meeting, which took place on January 27, we had the opportunity to meet Giulia Ghini, an expert stylist and professor of literature, who worked for 20 years in textile industries and gave a presentation in our in-depth class relating to the history of the textile sector of our city and of the Carpigiani brands known at European level (Blumarine, Liu-jo, Twin set, Moovy…) with particular reference to the employment rates referring to the sector. Professor Ghini was of fundamental importance primarily for our culture as inhabitants of Carpi since she made us understand the roots of our city, but she also gave us great help in the analysis phase of the "Ulisse" company in how much we have had the opportunity to contextualise its condition in a very specific textile industrial horizon and to understand certain economic dynamics. The third meeting, which also took place on 27 January, took place with Nadia Caporrella and Francesca Biancani, i.e. two statistics experts, currently employed at ISTAT (national and central statistics institute): after having provided us with some theoretical information relating to 'statistical survey have guided us on how to find and how to analyse the data relating to our survey and which would have been more useful and fruitful for us. Then we put the information provided to us by the two ISTAT experts into practice on 28 January together with Alessio Ghirri, a student at the University of Bologna statistics, who taught us on a practical level how to analyse the statistical data already previously collected, also providing us with various analysis platforms and professional statistical graphics appropriate to our precise investigation (he also demonstrated and explained their operation and how to use them). Finally, on January 30th we went to the company "Ulisse fashion art & retail SRL" where we had the honour of speaking with Ulisse, founder and head of the company, and Marco Cipolla, its economic and administrative director (who deals directly with the fairs in which European funds have been invested, i.e. the object of our statistical investigation). We had the opportunity to interview both Ulisse, who explained the history, the organisation, all the information and curiosities relating to the company, and Marco who explained to us the procedures related to the fairs and the great work of "back office" that company managers must do to earn customer trust and therefore ensure that it becomes loyal only to their company (which he documented to us through a series of private reports from the company in which the account of each fair held).

Main questions

1. How can we use the English language (required by the project) in our newspaper article to make it an advantage and not a difficulty for us? (DAVIDE BERTI, JOURNALIST OF THE "GAZZETTA DI MODENA")
2. How should we proceed to choose the title of our newspaper article? (DAVIDE BERTI, JOURNALIST OF THE "GAZZETTA DI MODENA")
3. What was the trigger that led to the decimation of Carpi companies in the textile sector? (GIULIA GHINI, EXPERT STYLIST)
4. In your opinion, what was the most evident consequence of the reduction in product quality (caused by the increasingly widespread "fast fashion" which consists in the frequent and constant launch of small collections of clothes, but of lower quality and precision)? (GIULIA GHINI, EXPERT STYLIST)
5. What is the main purpose of statistics and what is it useful for? (NADIA CAPORELLA and FRANCESCA BIANCANI, STATISTICS EXPERTS EMPLOYED AT ISTAT)
6. Where can we find and which are the most relevant and significant for our statistical investigation? (NADIA CAPORELLA and FRANCESCA BIANCANI, STATISTICS EXPERTS EMPLOYED AT ISTAT)
7. Considering that our project requires us to report the data in a dynamic infographic, which graph is the most effective for us? (FRANCESCO GHIRRI, STUDENT OF STATITSICA UNIVERSITY)
We have also attached the entire interview carried out at the company "Ulisse fashon art & details" which we addressed to the owner Ulisse and to the administrative director Marco Cipolli.

Main answers

1."The English language thanks to its formative characteristics is very direct, therefore unlike Italian newspaper articles which are full of subordinate clauses and complex verb tenses, English journalism is very concise, short and impactful, which is an advantage when it comes to writing articles related to mathematical, economic or statistical data [...] My advice is therefore to consult the articles of English statistical journals and try to get as close as possible to their "explanatory scheme".
2. " You must consider that the title is probably the main element of the newspaper article. This means that you must choose it with great care and attention. The titles must normally attract the reader's attention, which according to scientific investigations is difficult to keep for more than 5 seconds, therefore it must be impactful: contrary to what you may think, the title of the newspaper article does not necessarily have to summarise the content of the latter, what matters is that your title is focused at least on an element covered by the newspaper article [...]".
3. "One of the great problems of our country is the very high rate of labour, which consequently also affects the cost of the product which will clearly be higher. Faced with this difficulty, producers have looked for alternative places where the was less expensive than in Italy, which is why the textile market has now completely moved to eastern countries [...] Faced with this drastic drop in the demand for handcrafted products, Italian companies and above all those from Carpi which were mostly small and familiar, they found themselves in serious loss and crisis which is why they were forced to close, go bankrupt or sell the company.Ulysses is one of the few companies in the Textile sector that has managed to resist despite the difficulties such as the reason for which to date invoiced"
4. "While previously the items of clothing in which one dressed were a symbol of recognition of the social class to which one belonged and therefore of one's economic condition, due to the industrialization of the product (mass production) the items are automatically less precise and luxurious: this means that it is no longer possible to distinguish an individual's social class from clothing Access also adds to the fact that people tend to buy more luxurious fashion products on average regardless of their economic situation ".
5. "Statistics are used to make informed choices mainly due to the fact that the samples on which you carry out your research and analysis are representative of the whole community and reality, therefore they are in fact the most reliable data to which you can refer [...]"
6. The experts materially demonstrated to us on the official Istat website how and how to select and display the data on the site; they then advised us to focus our investigation on the comparison between the national income and the Carpi one deriving from the production, sale and export of clothing.
7. "When you create something dynamic, I suggest you focus on pie charts as only through the latter is it possible to add and compare different types of statistical data [...]. Of course, if you have to demonstrate a particularly simple that does not imply a multiplicity of data, even a bar graph may suffice [...]"