A company with employees from differing cultures and with different ideas, with their artistic expressions, professional experience and traditions are the foundation for manufacturing high quality, aesthetically pleasing products. This is the world of the Zucchi company group, a world filled with people committed daily to excellence in home furnishings.


The Zucchi Group


The modular Group comprises a large number of subsidiary companies developing, manufacturing and marketing finished as well as semi-finished products and high quality fabrics for third-parties in the home textile sector.

The companies responsible for yarn and fabric production, Standardtela-filati and Standardtela-tessuti, manufacture mainly for the style program of the labels of Zucchi, Bassetti and Descamps. The same applies for the finishing and making up process by subsidiary Mascioni (bleaching, dyeing, printing, quilting and ready to wear).

Zucchi, Bassetti and Descamps also hold a range of companies operating in special market niches and marketing leading labels abroad, especially in Italy and France.

History

Vincenzo Zucchi founded the company in 1920 as weaving mill for home furnishings. After diverse extensions, bed and table linen and various mixes were added in 1953 under the present company name Vincenzo Zucchi S.p.A.
In the Sixties, the company started its development concept by taking over or combining other companies to secure raw materials (yarns) and semi-finished products (fabrics), create new production areas and gain access to new markets with appropriate sales structures. At the same time, the company followed a label concept using pattern collections to introduce dyed and printed styles. To accelerate this process the textile refining plants were modernized with the latest bleaching, dyeing, printing and finishing machines.

Today, Vincenzo Zucchi S.p.A is an industrial holding with comprehensive know-how in all production levels involved in manufacturing home furnishings and using state-of-the-art technical plants. It relies on an efficient sales network with it’s own, highly qualified sales points worldwide. The Group has a total of 3,500 employees, 1,200 of which are operative in France.

The market

Average annual expenditure on home furnishings in Europe is 22 Euro per person. This also applies to the most important markets for the company, Italy and France. Zucchi’s excellent price/performance ratio attained a 25% market share in Italy and 15% in France.

The Group has more than 300 shops and factory outlets across the European market with trade names Zucchi Stores, Bassetti, Descamps, Martins Bleus, Texaffaires and Bianca.

Standardtela S.p.A

Standardtela S.p.A has three factories in Italy manufacturing yarns and raw fabrics from 100% cotton for both the Zucchi Group and for direct sales in Europe and the USA.
Standardtela set the following targets in the last years in order to remain competitive in the market that was becoming more and more difficult: Maximum service for customers (just in time and technical support), highest quality for it’s own products, versatility and reliability.

Considerable investments and organizational changes were necessary to reach these targets:

1. Creation of a team working closely together, kept at a high know-how level by ongoing training and oriented to common targets.
2. Installation of a fast, comprehensive information system for all operational levels to support quick, individual decisions.
3. New automated production plants and integration of modern machines in production cycles to optimize performance and Zucchi product quality.

Weaving mills

Quality was also decisive for the Zucchi Group when selecting weaving machines. Today, the company uses 98 double-width DORNIER air-jet weaving machines with 8 employees per shift in Notaresco to produce high quality bed linen, 340 working days per year. Up to 95% integral efficiency is attained. Double-width DORNIER rapier weaving machines are used in Casorezzo to develop new Jacquard creations.

The decision in Notaresco was based on a comprehensive, systematic comparison of air-jet weaving machines and multiphase technology from competitors. The result in favour of DORNIER resulted from higher flexibility at high speeds, lower filling thread break level, better fabric quality and the advantages of pneumatic tucker selvedges as against conventional selvedges with mechanical tuckers. Together with favourable energy consumption, the final result was significantly lower production costs as compared to competitors.

DORNIER’s Fast Dobby Change (FDC®) system was also an important factor to protect the investment concerning Standardtela’s future development of complex fabric designs. This patented system allows customers to easily switch from plain weave cam motion to dobby version with a high number of shafts to meet possible future market demands.