The Footwear Club

GIOVANNI GAIA is ASSOMAC's new president
June 27, 2003

by Davide Catena, ASSOMAC

Vigevano - ITALY: Assomac, the Italian Association of manufacturers of machines for making shoes and leathergoods and for tanning hides, held its Ordinary General Meeting in Vigevano on Friday, the 27th of June. As usual, the meeting was attended by a large number of Associates, guests and representatives of the sector publications. Again this year, the meeting was not held in the offices of the Association, but in the impressive setting of the Castello Sforzesco of Vigevano.

Giuseppe Barrera - Assomac's President - having completed his 4-year term, was not eligible for reelection. The general meeting was therefore called for nominating a new Board of Directors which, in turn, chose the new president: Giovanni Gaia of Atom Spa. In his final report as President, Mr. Barrera invited the Associates to provide full support for the Association and the Fairs (Simac and Tanning Tech). Only by using a system strategy can there be any hope of overcoming the difficulty that the President defined as being an "annus horribilis."

The data relative to the year 2002 still show the effects of the start of what was an "acceptable" year, with shoe machinery exports down by 1% and spare parts down by 9.5%. These negative results were partially compensated for by an increase of 7.5% for tanning machinery and 1% for leathergoods machinery. However, the domestic market also suffered a crisis. Therefore, as regards 2002, sales dropped an estimated 10%. But things got worse later. Between one General Meeting and the next; that is; between July of last year and June of this year, the situation deteriorated to the point where, for the first time, there were layoffs in the sector.

What really made the leather, shoe and leathergoods picture take on a gloomy look were such external factors as the Iraq war and sars. These factors worsened the already negative picture as regards consumer performance which, beginning with the leading nations - the United States, Germany and Japan - spread throughout the world. The crisis hit the whole manufacturing system and put a stop to investments in technology. The excessively underestimated dollar created further problems for the clients in the euro area. Therefore, what we have to do is make good use of our store of entrepreneurial expertise, which has remained intact, and restudy and redesign our presence on the markets which, up until recently, was giving good results but has now become insufficient.

In reviewing his years as president, Mr. Barrera expressed his message when he said, "I've been especially lucky in having been able to work with an excellent team and was able to finish the jobs - that were already near conclusion - started by those who had preceded me. In other words, I also took credit for the things that were started by these other people."

In fact, under Mr. Barrera, the innovation notebooks on shoe-manufacturing technology and tanning engineering were completed. And, furthermore, he acquired the new offices and saw to their redesign. He activated the video-conference system for the Committee and Board meetings. He started the leathergood notebooks and realized the Assomac, Simac and Tanning Tech portal. Assomac maintained the Presidency of the CEN/TC 200 Technical Committee, with Giulio Tandura, and the Presidency of the CEN/TC 201 Technical Committee, with Paolo Allevi, thus providing them with the opportunity of continuing to be the protagonist actors at the European level as regards the machine norms. "We must not let others tell us what we have to do. We must establish that by ourselves!" 

Then he added, "We acquired the Presidency of the Italian-Iranian Commission, with Pietro Troielli, but all of this did not keep us from continuing with our normal secretarial activity; that is, managing the fairs, the professional training courses for technicians of our associate companies, the feasibility studies and the market, especially in Africa and Vietnam.

Mr. Barrera then turned the floor over to the three Vice Presidents - Giovanni Gaia (shoe machinery), Giacomo Vallero (tanning machinery) and Alberto Paccagnella (leathergoods machinery) - each of which analyzed the economic situation existing in their particular sectors. They all expressed the need for sustaining the Association and the fairs, an expression of cohesion and a moment of great visibility.

After interventions by the heads of the various Assomac offices, Mr. Barrera concluded by underlining Assomac's latest editorial effort.. " I wanted to put together all our General Meeting reports in a book. If what I think is true - that our Association has represented an important point of reference for our companies - then I believe each one of us can find a piece of his entrepreneurial life in this book. Actually, when all is said and done, the General Meeting reports contain our sector's history, which is our history. That's why I asked Assomac for this latest effort. Please don't just put this book on a shelf. Read it.

I've read it, and I can assure you it stimulated a precious moment of reflection on our past, a past I believe can and will help us redesign the future."

This means "discovering"…solutions to the continual contradictions that we constantly run into and that have to be transformed into opportunities by interpreting our "company adventure" by using the pessimism of reasoning and the optimism of will power." Because, said Mr. Barrera in conclusion, "The decision to use this phase as an opportunity for renewal entirely depends on us, on our willingness to accomplish this, on our ability to make continual self-renewal our prime competitive factor. It's up to us to decide whether this phase should bring renewal or decline."

As his last act as President, Mr. Barrera presented Amilcare Baccini - Assomac's director - with a silver plaque commemorating his 20 years of dedication to the Association.