Resilience: It's a word we've abused so much over the years. As much as I've always liked the concept, this word has lost its meaning, like everything that is repeated to the point of exhaustion.
Thinking over the years, however, I realized that even its meaning was no longer for me. The term resilience has scientific origins, and it comes used in physics and engineering to indicate all those materials that have the ability to resist to a collision, adapt and return to the initial shape by absorbing and exploiting the energy released after deformation.
Here's what didn't convince me: return to the initial form. We never go back to the way we were before, the initial state is always deformed, modified, we go through a crisis to be reborn, not to imitate the initial state of stillness.
And in this article I want to tell you what has happened to us over the years and how we have reacted.
The first big change: the crisis in the footwear sector
I was born and raised among leathers, mastic, strange machinery, smells that characterized my parents' factory where I wandered around since I was a child. At the time, I never thought I'd work there, in that place that seemed so noisy and confusing to me.
Over time, however, I started working on it too and slowly I detected the cracks and contradictions. I went to study economics in Bologna, the city that stole my heart, but still my land called me to itself. As passionate as I was about numbers and strategies, my "call" was towards a creative world, which could find an outlet right in my home.
I still remember the summer of 2008 it was the year of my thesis, which (obviously) I dedicated to shoes: "Analysis of the costs of a footwear product" this was the title of my work. By doing research I collected more and more information and realized that something was not working as it should.
In the factory the bad mood was growing, the crisis was insistent and the situation was starting to get frustrating: my parents, my brother and I we worked 12 hours a day as always, but without the expected results.
Every day we fought with the anguish of the gods missed payments and debt collection and consequently, with the fear of not being able to pay the salaries of our employees and the invoices of our suppliers. Until one day, in the throes of anxiety, I realized that this wasn't life: we needed to find an alternative, and quickly too.
The obvious choice was to produce the shoes directly ourselves, thus ceasing to be "subcontractors" for other brands. But first I had to convince my father. He who had always produced in large quantities, he who had always bought huge stocks of materials, he who had a very large warehouse whose management took up so much time and money. We fought against the classic "it's always been like this", but finally Gian Luca and I convinced everyone: in order to distinguish ourselves we had to go in the opposite direction.
Producing limited edition, unique shoes in very small quantities. In order to distinguish myself, I had to create something special, tailor-made, that went against the large quantities of product sold at a low price offered by the competition.
This is how La Scarpetta di Venere was born: ion November 21, 2009 I opened my first shop in Civitanova Marche. Inside, there were our first creations: colorful shoes, made in a limited series with a numbered 6/10 pairs per model.
I was only 24 years old, if I think about it today I still can't believe it. That little shop was a small drop in the ocean, the hope that we could start over. I was aware that I had made a courageous choice, I didn't know at the time that I would have made many more in the following years.
A pandemic to face
In the following years we built our world, step by step. We opened the shop in Sirolo, closed the one in Civitanova with the awareness that if you want to grow you have to take that step too far.
From there, it was 2013, the mission was clear, we had to go further and make ourselves known, have our shoes tried on and tell how and where they were made, so we opened the first temporary store in Bologna, which became a real shop in 2017, the year in which I became a mother and it was no longer so simple to move lightly.
Production was now well underway, growth constant and planned, in 2018 we doubled the turnover of previous years.
Until it came the Covid-19 pandemic.
It was really a hard blow for us. The forced quarantine forced us to sit there, in front of the mirror, and reflect. We couldn't DO, an artisan company that couldn't use hands and produce.
While we tried to reassure each other saying that "everything will be fine" I was dying of fear: the shops closed, the planned plans to invest in, the deadlines to pay anyway.
After the initial panic, however, we rolled up our sleeves. First of all, we couldn't stop. With Francesca, our graphic design collaborator, we've come up with a sort of virtual sample: we have digitized all the leathers at our disposal, all the models, all the combinations. The only possibility was to sell online something that was in my head but not yet realized, our luck was to already have a site with online sales.
We then sold through the online site with the plan that as soon as we returned to the factory we would produce all the shoes already sold and continue the production of those already planned.
We worked even more on social media, reporting what was happening to us, as well as our products. We did live broadcasts, shared fears and hopes with other craftsmen and many clients. Turnover in 2020 quadrupled compared to 2019 and is growing steadily every year.
It was precisely these changes that awoke me and gave light to the desire for change that led to a difficult, painful, but necessary choice to follow the vision: we closed the shop in Bologna. The priority was to cut costs, and remain as flexible as possible to be able to change, yes, but to return to the initial state, well, to evolve.
We chose to only open pop-ups, temporary shops that would allow us to be in Bologna, but also in Milan, Verona, Rome, Florence, wherever we wanted to go.
And this too, it turned out a valuable choice. In the last two years I've met so many customers and artisans that I only knew virtually, and it's been something great. It was an opportunity to try out the models that many had only seen online, and which they could later purchase with confidence on our e-commerce. But not only.
It was an opportunity to hug each other, for transform a digital relationship into something even more authentic. It's a choice that, while taken with a heavy heart, I will never regret making.
And today?
And so, we are at 2023. What awaits us in the future? We still can't know. We are working to secure our corporate vision, but to do so we had to question everything (again). In recent months we have studied the structure of our company, the workflows, the processes, we have analyzed the costs maniacally, something that had not yet been done up to now.
A clearer idea of who we are is emerging, which we need to focus on who we want to be.
So, welcome back change. We are not resilient, we don't want to go back to the initial state, ever. We want to flow, adapt, flow, always trying to create something that isn't there yet. Trying to give new life to this dream that started 14 years ago.
