Scampini is a historical brand in the interlining sector. Scampini Santino founded the company in 1929 to make lining for jackets and coats. The main article was the classical “camel hair”, exclusive article for the high-class tailoring sector. In 1949 Scampini was registered with the Chamber of Commerce of Varese and started upgrading its property by expanding it.
High quality tie interlining made in Italy
Then, with the arrival of the “adhesive”, fabric products coated with a special resin which in contact with heat sticks to external fabric, the company had to make a change by modifying some fabrics already in the warehouse. This was how the interlining department came to be..
In 1970 there was the beginning of the new production line. The garment makers were substituted by tie makers who hand-cut the three fabrics that make up a tie: the shell, the tipping and the interlining.
Soon thereafter, the clients’ requests for fabric began to include the final product. In fact, the biggest tie producers were automating their production with the help of the new, German “Liba” machine. .
These machines could produce 1,000 ties in 8 hours and the garment maker was not able to cut this quantity of interlining to keep up with the new technology.
With a big technical and financial push, Scampini Srl modified a shearing machine so that it could cut its fabrics according to the client’s model thus creating in its plant a new department, “the cutting room”. From 1980 to 1993, the tie production market increased exponentially. Scampini Srl was obligated to increase the capacity of the cutting room by adding 5 shearing machines.
In those years, the company reached the production of 5,000 dozen pieces a day, equal to 60,000 interlinings which correspond to 13,200,000 pieces in 220 business a year.
The market started dropping after 1994 when the first Chinese products entered the market; many of the tie makers closed their in-house and external laboratories to commission the work to Chinese third parties. The first drop was felt in southern Italy where many specialised tie makers had to close.
The big numbers decreased very quickly, but only in the low-quality sector. As a matter of fact, it was the promotional ties and those being sold by the bigger distributors that were the first to suffer.
The medium-quality and label sectors did not cave. Scampini had the time to scale down the cutting room and modify its articles for the high-level and high-quality market..
Nowadays, that the numbers are decidedly low, the winning factor is without a doubt the production of well-made articles with a delivery time, to the manufacturers, of no more than 3 days. For this reason, the production of both the yarn and the fabric is managed by “strategic” third parties who have been collaborating with Scampini for over 40 years.
The first one is the spinner: they purchase the raw material and check it and work it taking into account the technical specifics that the yarn has to have. When production is complete, the yarn is then shipped to the weaver which, based on the article being produced, puts the yarn on looms and puts it in the works. All this has a cost, not only for Scampini, but also for the “strategic” suppliers, seeing as both the spinner and the weaver purchase the bulk of the material.
Such a structure surely has what it takes to continue on the global market. Today, speed and elasticity in producing articles required by the market is important.
It is important that the time span of the production of a product, from the transformation of the raw material to the final product – that is, in its box ready for shipment – be as brief as possible. Maintaining such a structure is the only way to control the real cost of the product and thus keep the costs to a minimum to give clients a high quality product at a low cost.
Scampini Srl produces about forty interlinings; around ten of these are substituted annually to keep its collection of samples continuously updated.
Not only is the article important, but also the model the client wants to produce.
For this reason, a Gerber technology machine was purchased about 20 years ago to satisfy the needs of the most important clients.
Since then, based on our clients’ designs, it has been possible to produce ties customised in model and cut out of the fabric chosen in a matter of hours without having to make expensive dies.
Moreover, Scampini can count on quite a unique series of dies: about 500 different, very exclusive models.
In Italy, there is still high quality production, managed by the labels that want “Made in Italy” products, as well as the production of Italian converters which work on high-quality, niche markets, even more than the most important labels.
IThe future of this sector will be successful only for those who will be able to guarantee quality and timely delivery, seeing as Asian markets will not be able to secure worldwide production. Even if they could do so, there would then be product standardisation which would surely create an important decrease in demand. This would eventually bring the clients to necessarily distance themselves from the Chinese market to be able to survive.
Scampini will always try to find the best solutions to cater to the future by modifying and creating both technical and structural solutions to help deal with the challenge of globalization.
