Sburlati (Confindustria Moda): «Made in Italy under attack, protection and industrial policy needed»

A complicated start to the year - as expected - with a 5.5% drop in exports to 6.2 billion in the first two months, accentuated towards non-European markets (-9.3%), and a strong growth in demand for wage supplementation: between January and March, 13.1 million hours were authorized, 20.4% more than in the same period in 2024. A year that had already seen significant requests for social safety nets from companies in the crisis-ridden supply chain.

The data, provided by the Research Office of Confindustria Moda, confirm a crisis situation for the 40 thousand companies in the Italian textile-clothing sector that are gathered in the association. Eight out of 10 of them expect to close the first half of the year with stable or decreasing revenues compared to last year. "There are four factors that negatively influence our sector: duties, although the effect is still indirect; uncertainty that slows down investments; the cost of energy that weighs especially on textiles; the size of our companies that are small. We are working closely with the government, but it is essential, now more than ever, that the institutions accompany these efforts with targeted and timely industrial policies".

Sburlati, in office since May 19 for the four-year period 2025-29, underlines the difference between "reacting to an event, which Italian companies have shown they can do well in response to events like Covid, and planning a long-term action that can protect and strengthen the Made in Italy supply chain, "the second most important for sales abroad after the mechanical one. We need to allow companies to invest in the digital and sustainable transition and to do so we need access to capital. I am thinking, for example, of a series of tax incentives to push pension or investment funds to bet on the Italian fashion supply chain which is made up of many small companies".

At this moment, according to Sburlati, CEO of the Pattern Group that deals with prototyping and production for luxury brands, «Made in Italy is under attack, a structural attack. We must curb episodes of illegality and bad communication: there have been video campaigns on TikTok that led people to believe that products made in Italy were made in China. Let's turn the situation around». The reference is to the recent episodes that between 2024 and 2024 led the Milan Public Prosecutor's Office to place brands such as Armani, Dior and Valentino under judicial administration, which resulted in a Protocol for legality in the fashion supply chain signed last May 26 at the Prefecture of Milan. The next step will be the launch of a technical table that will have the task of creating the platform that will profile the participating companies (on a voluntary basis). «Within the Fashion Plan that the government is working on there must be the issue of legality and I hope that the Lombardy Protocol can be an example on which to build a national regulation. In the meantime, if everyone applied national contracts, it would be a step forward to guarantee decent wages."

Among other concrete projects that Confindustria Moda is working on, Sburlati mentions «the unification of national technological centers into a single entity» and it is important to create «a protocol for common auditing, so as not to stop companies for days».