As he explains in this issue Oscar Farinetti (founder of Unieuro and Eataly), there is no secret recipe to become a successful entrepreneur, though there are people saying that the characteristics of those who succeeded in it are almost always the same: lightness, speed, determination, propensity to doubt and loyalty.
Farinetti believes the household appliance market must learn the product-telling. Telling what is that you are going to buy, how it was created and by whom, making customers more aware and more careful in buying Italian products. Speaking of the crisis household appliances Farinetti argues that we continued to develop design very much but in the home appliance products this is not enough. We must constantly think about the large economies of scale and labor costs, by updating all the time, and this has been lacking in Italy. Our superiority in taste and innovation has not been enough in that area.
No long-term vision. On the contrary: no vision at all. The consequences are serious, especially for companies, such as those of White Goods sector, working in the central part of the value chain, with standardized productions subject to competition by Eastern countries. To start again it is necessary to go back upstream, dealing with design and development. In one word, with innovation. White Goods sector has the problem of being a relatively standardized and little innovative manufacturing, in which competitors from Eastern countries manage to be more competitive in terms of costs.
And so they crush us.
In the area of the home appliances itself there are other products that, instead, have a stronger part upstream and that, focusing more on the engineering, resist better. It is not a sector problem, it is a problem of placement in the value chain.
However it is necessary to look to the future with optimism, but not only. The “Italian way” must be very simple from a political point of view and very complex from a technical point of view. Industrial policy must start from a clear and long-term message by the Government, which until now has been lacking. Instead, for the technical side, there is no magic wand, or a single instrument that solves everything. We are speaking of a “symphony” of interventions that can also be different in costs, some mainly regulators and other of incentive. A recipe is that interventions need to strengthen the enterprise capital and size; a continuous innovation of product, process and organization; measures to improve the skills of workers and measures to encourage the expansion to new growing markets.
