Leather & Luxury had the opportunity to take stock after the Lineapelle fair with Silvia Paganini, Sales and Marketing Director of Tacchificio Villa Cortese.
What is the business philosophy of Tacchificio Villa Cortese?
We are basically a family business, and we like to emphasize this because we were founded by our grandfather Luigi Gazzardi 72 years ago now: currently the second and third generations coexist in the company. Our mission has always been to pursue high quality through both process and product standards geared toward continuous improvement. In our reality, all this is coupled with the painstaking care typical of an artisanal company that is inextricably linked to a philosophy of sustainability.
For you, the issue of respecting the planet is fundamental....
Absolutely, as we are closely linked to the territory (since the company's founding, the town of Villa Cortese has literally grown up around our headquarters), we have always felt a strong responsibility from the environmental point of view and tried to have as mild an impact as possible. We have been focusing on recycling of materials since the earliest days, when it was not yet a topic that was talked about in companies. In addition, our production is environmentally friendly and with minimal waste, thanks to the use of renewable energy resources, photovoltaic systems, and digital optimization tools that allow us to make significant resource savings in processing and sampling. In recent years, our efforts have turned toward sustainable alternatives in molding materials to try to approach sustainability as comprehensively as possible. We are currently taking the necessary steps to obtain UNI EN ISO 14001 ("Environmental Management System") certification, and we have recently renewed our Plast certification, which is a product certification related to a particular material with which we make our packaging that minimizes impacts on the environment and waste generation.
How much weight does technological innovation and research have with respect to fashion trends?
Being a partner of the most prestigious international fashion brands, certainly as a company we tend to constantly seek a balance between what is innovation and what is the creative component, from which you absolutely cannot disregard working in the fashion industry. On the other hand, we have to be always anticipating the customer's needs so from this point of view technology and research & development help us a lot.
Among your products presented at Lineapelle, which ones received the most favor from buyers?
Let me preface by saying that for us, the last edition of Lineapelle went very well, with a good influx of visitors and excellent feedback from customers. The greatest interest was in our new sustainable materials, in particular FheelBio BCA™ (Bio-Circular Attributed), thus giving us reason to focus on increasingly sustainable heels that rely on plastics that are less and less derived from fossil substances. We have long been studying different eco-alternatives that tend to reduce the environmental impact of each step in the creation of the plastic material, and we are proud that the market is rewarding the FheelBio BCA™ line, which not only has identical performance, quality and properties compared to standard ones, but also produces fewer emissions into the atmosphere than the traditional method, while also reducing energy consumption and wastewater disposal. The highlight of this line is that it replaces part of the fossil raw material with sustainable bio-allocated materials, allocated by mass balance according to ISCC Plus certification, a methodology that ensures material traceability and sustainability of the entire supply chain, from the raw materials used to the finished product. Sourced from organic waste (e.g., waste oil), the materials chosen are 65 percent biocircular allocated mass share. The heels we deliver to customers are thus accompanied by a sustainability statement where the amount of sustainable raw material allocated is listed, but I will not hide from you that our goal is to reach 100% biocircular mass share by the end of 2023, making our items even greener.
