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  Welcome address

Ernesto KRATTER - GAL Alto Bellunese, Auronzo di Cadore, Italy

 

 

THE BELLUNO SPECTACLES DISTRICT

The spectacles production area in the province of Belluno is an excellent example of a successful Italian industrial district.

Belluno's association with spectacles began with a contract dated 1878 : in that year a local man, Angelo Frescura, in collaboration with Giovanni Lozza and Leone Frescura, opened a craft workshop for the production of spectacles near Calalzo, in Cadore, an area with deep historical roots, most of which extends over the Italian Dolomites.

Starting from this first enterprise, what is now a world-famous Industrial District began to take shape – becoming aware only later of its extraordinary results – and gradually developed over time all the typical features of a district economy : density of factories; numerical preponderance of small companies ; intense inter-company relationships in the preparation of the finished product, in competition and in production for third parties; and deep cultural and social roots in the territory.

The extension of the District coincides today with the entire province of Belluno and from here it has also expanded into Greater Venice with significant concentrations in the provinces of Treviso, Padua and Venice.

Geographically speaking the Belluno Spectacles District has the following strongholds : Cadore, the historical heartland and still the area with the highest concentration of companies, Agordino, headquarters of the largest company in the world, Longaronese, Alpago and Feltrino, owing to industries expanding and multiplying both spontaneously and assisted by legislation following the Vajont dam tragedy.

The geographical and environmental features of the Belluno area are very remarkable and have determined – and still influence – its human settlement patterns and its economic and industrial development: the province of Belluno is all mountainous : 4/5 of the territory consists of forests and farms and 43 % is woodland – almost twice the figure for Italy as a whole.

But above all, the province of Belluno hosts the Dolomites, a mountain range unique in the world for its morphological features and beauty ; an exceptional territory also for its fragility and asperity for human settlements.

In such a physical context, as precious as it is delicate and demanding, the work of its inhabitants has slowly built up a real and proper mountain civilisation, creating a considerable and mutually respectful presence of settlements for tourism and industry, which since the middle of the twentieth century have brought the benefits of economic growth to a traditionally very poor area of Italy. Even when it was underdeveloped, however, this area had higher literacy rates than the rest of the country (an element which is sufficient on its own to confirm the necessary relationship between knowledge and action).

The District specialises in all forms of production associated with the world of spectacles: spectacle frames, sunglasses, small parts for spectacles, manufacturing machinery and equipment, galvanic treatments, cases and – to a lesser extent – lenses.

The main figures for the District are as follows :

170 industrial companies with more than 12,000 employees ; 94 % of these companies with less than 100 employees ; 650 workshops with around 1,700 employees ; one company for every 11 inhabitants ; an unemployment rate less than half the figure for countries such as France, the United Kingdom and Germany; turnover accounting for 85 % of Italian production with more than 70 % exported. The District makes a significant contribution to the industrial strength of the Greater Venice Region, which with only 7.7 % of the Italian population accounts for as much as 33 % of the Italian trade balance and produces 14 % of all articles made in Italy. The main markets are : Europe 46 % and America 38.5 %, followed by Japan and other Middle and Far Eastern countries.

A distinguishing feature of an industrial district is its particular internal division of work, which instead of involving different departments of a single large company, takes place between small and very small independent companies, managed by individual entrepreneurs, all of them daily occupied in pursuing their own business interests and maintaining and increasing their own competitiveness.

In the Belluno Spectacles District the presence of a high concentration of businesses is due to the fact that the process of manufacturing spectacle frames can be broken down into separate sections: despite the increasing mechanisation and computerisation of the production process, 60 per cent of it still involves numerous manual operations.

With the passage of time – already prior to but above all after the Second World War – this had three significant consequences: the chance to accumulate considerable technical knowledge (“know-how”) in an extremely widespread manner; the chance for people to start up their own businesses with limited capital and investments, businesses founded on this “capital” of specialised and flexible know-how; the chance to operate immediately in a context of intense interaction between businesses.

Today’s production process is the result of the numerous machines produced by the spectacle factories themselves, connected to computerised systems by means of specific technical solutions. The end result is an effective integration of the manufacturing skills at a local level with the know-how available on a global scale.

The result of this has been an acceleration of the processes, a constant search for margins of innovation, an improvement in quality in compliance with community and international standards, and above all the successful development of extremely complex and flexible processes which can take advantage of specialised market niches.

Accustomed to collaborating with other companies in the same area and along the same production process, and to measuring themselves against numerous local competitors, all the industrial entrepreneurs and artisans of the Belluno Spectacles District have made innovation their watchword, constantly researching new solutions for products and processes, through daily experimental trials. In this way improvement is a constant objective and not simply a slogan.

The company and business model at the heart of the Belluno Spectacles District and of its successes is based, then, on the ability to operate in a network, on the practice of the experimental method and on a widespread willingness to assume business risks personally.

To overcome the limitations of their small – and very often extremely small – size, the vast majority of spectacle manufacturers in the Belluno area have developed ways of networking within a system of multiple and differentiated inter-company relationships.

Every company in the District then finds its own direction through a continual process of practical testing of its possible business alternatives, learning rapidly from both their own and others companies’ successes or failures.

The Belluno Spectacles District is, in the final analysis, a universe of people who in their daily experience – and this is true both of large and small entrepreneurs and of their company employees – bring into play not eight hours of work but their whole way of life, keeping very open borders between home and work, between working time and leisure time, and between working interests and private interests.

During the long years it took to reach its current functional complexity, the Belluno Spectacles District developed a wide range of service structures supporting both the needs of individual companies and the overall requirements of the productive system of the entire district.

CITTADELLA DELL’OCCHIALE (Citadel of Spectacles) is the name of a project, launched in 1994, which aims, both in its configuration and in the content of the services it offers, to become a significant element in the structure and strength of the Belluno Spectacles District. Its clearly-stated objective is to make available and coordinate the work of organisations, institutions and instruments to consolidate and renew the conditions for the success of the manufacturing district.

The Citadel of Spectacles consists of a series of different specialised structures which tend to organise and operate in a network (like the network typical of relationships between the various individual manufacturers), pursuing an objective of synergy: multiplying results and increasing their effectiveness, thanks to mutual coordination and the division of work on the basis of principles of competence.

SIPAO is the Section for Industries Producing Articles for Opticians of the Industrialists’ Association of the Province of Belluno.

Within this Association – a member of the Confederation of Industry (Confindustria), the largest organisation representing Italian companies – the member firms are grouped together in Sections on the basis of their different manufacturing specialisations.

With a mandate from the Belluno spectacle manufacturers, SIPAO – which has its own offices in Tai di Cadore – develops all the initiatives designed to increase the companies’ competitiveness.

Owing to the importance of the manufacturing sector it represents, SIPAO has put down deep roots in the local area and is one of the leading actors in the development of Cadore.

The mission of CERTOTTICA is to assist in certifying quality, a fundamental requisite in a product such as spectacles. It is based in Longarone, in a very central position with respect to the different valleys in which the manufacturing facilities are located. The Certottica centre has specialised knowledge and equipment enabling it to offer companies in the sector services for the quality control of products and processes, and specialist services available for any part of the world in which they operate.

Its role is to safeguard and support the interests of spectacle manufacturers in relations with institutions – both international and of single States – involved in research and standardisation. It also promotes technological development in the sector, commissioning studies and carrying out its own research in collaboration with Universities and Italian and European research centres and participating in international working parties. As another of its objectives is to facilitate employment in the district, Certottica provides professional training and retraining for workers in the industry, organising courses and seminars on new process and product technologies, as well as on compulsory or recommended technical standards..Its research and testing programmes have enabled it to assume a leading and active role in the development of such standards at a European level.

OPTIMAC, the trade fair for the spectacle manufacturing machinery, is held at the Longarone Trade Fair Complex and is an interesting annual exhibition of new products, with particular reference to the manufacturing process.

CENTRO SERVIZI OCCHIALERIA (the Spectacles Industry Service Centre) is an important structure providing support to workshops in the District.

This agency, which was set up by the Associations of Artisans and Industrialists of the Province of Belluno, provides a full range of collective services – from information and advice to the performance of functions which can be decentralised – tailor-made for smaller companies which would otherwise be limited by their size. It is also a useful intermediary in relations between the various protagonists in the production process, bringing together purchasers and subcontractors.