Fendi builds new footwear factory in Italy
Fendi continues to invest extensively in Italian manufacturing excellence. The Roman luxury label owned by the LVMH group has the wind in its sails, and is amping up its production capacity. Fendi recently inaugurated with great fanfare the first flagship store for its furniture line, in Milan, and has confirmed that next autumn it will open a new factory in the town of Fermo, in the central Italian region of Marche, an area renowned for its footwear manufacturing expertise.
The new facility had been heralded last September by Fendi’s CEO Serge Brunschwig who, speaking to Italian media, indicated that the label would relocate to Fermo the operations of its existing footwear factory in Porto San Giorgio, also in the Marche region. The new, state-of-the-art Fermo facility will be built with sustainability in mind, and will employ some 300 artisans.
Brunschwig spoke at the opening of the first Fendi footwear Master Class, organised in partnership with Fermo’s ‘Ostilio Ricci’ vocational training school for artisans (IPSIA), part of the ‘Adopt a School’ project promoted by the Altagamma Foundation, the association of Italy’s top luxury brands.
“Italy is synonymous with tradition, history, beauty and above all excellence. For this reason, investing in Italian manufacturing and quality craftsmanship is crucial to ensure that such skills can be handed over from generation to generation of artisans. We are very proud to begin building this new factory, which will enable us to increase our production capacity and our workforce,” said Brunschwig in a press release.
The new factory, equipped with solar panels, will extend over an area of more than 7,000 m2, including production facilities, offices and a warehouse. The façade will have a corrugated aluminium surface for an effect akin to draped leather, and the interiors, benefiting from plenty of natural light thanks to glass walls and skylights, will be exceptionally bright, and distinctive for their minimalist style, enhanced by steel furniture and quartz cement floors.
The Fermo factory will be inaugurated in autumn 2022, as will the other new Fendi facility being built in Bagno a Ripoli, near Florence. The latter is a new design and production plant specialised in leather goods, called Fabbrica, which is being constructed on the site of the old Fornace Brunelleschi blast furnace.
The former industrial wasteland will be transformed into a sustainable factory extending over an area of 12,000 m2, almost entirely covered with vegetation, designed by Milanese architecture studio Piuarch. Fabbrica will initially employ nearly 250 people, growing to 400-500 at full capacity and supplementing the output of the other Fendi factory in Tuscany, located in Ponte a Ema.
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