Mascioni Marks 50 Years

Cuvio, Italy — Major changes in the global decorative home fashions business have dramatically, and positively, changed the business model of Mascioni from a printer and finisher of decorative fabrics to a supplier of fashion bedding for important retailers and hotels companies.

Mascioni, which celebrated its 50th anniversary July 21, "is very positively looking to future growth" as a result of these changes, said Alberto Mascioni who, with his brother Carlo, heads the business.

"With the change in our business model in the past three years from high quality printing and finishing of fabrics for the home, we have recorded a 20% increase in sales," Alberto Mascioni reported. For 2006 alone the company recorded sales of 60 million Euros, a 10% increase over the prior year. And in June of this year, "Our bookings in hospitality were double, compared with June '06."

While the company has expanded its reach into the fashion bedding and hospitality arenas, it has not abandoned its heritage of quality fashion printing and finishing for both the decorative fabric and luxury bedding markets.

For the entire company, Mascioni explained, "The future is more and more fashion oriented — a direction that is requiring more change, more quickly, in product development, production and retailing. "Programs today are lasting a season, not years — like the apparel business," he pointed out.

And the key to success in this milieu, he believes, "is being quick like we are, which allows retailers to have the right product at the right time, unlike Asia where it takes months. Fashion products require speed — from the idea to the production to the store. And we bring value in each step." Another plus, he added, "is that we offer different products including prints," which has been the company signature from the beginning.

The firm was started by Alberto's late father Bernardo and late uncle Umberto, as a small factory producing silk scarves and printed cotton handkerchiefs. In the mid-1960s it evolved into a fabric printing business with its Duplex printing process that printed fabric on both sides at once.

In the late '60s the noted Italian bedding company Bassetti, through its Finbassetti unit, became the majority owner. Later the Bassetti Group became part of the Marzotto empire with the Mascionis running the business as they do today. In 1988, ownership moved from Marzotto to the Zucchi Group.

Today the company provides consolidated textile finishings activities for Bassetti, Flou, Bellora, Yves Delorme, Descamps, Sonia Rykiel, Ralph Lauren, and Calvin Klein. Its finished bedding collections are featured at Crate & Barrel, Zara Home, Habitat, and John Lewis. It recently closed a major contract with the newly renovated Plaza Hotel in New York, Mascioni said.