Exports and fairs: anti-crisis keys

Exports can lift Italy out of the shoals of crisis. And, of all sectors, manufacturing has the best chance of success, as long as this country stops tolerating various kinds of parochialism and looks increasingly beyond its own borders. Some points for reflection from the Internationalization Forum Made in Italy organized by Messe Frankfurt.

Reported below, the conclusions that emerged from the FIMI - Internationalization Forum Made in Italy, organized by Messe Frankfurt on November 22nd in Milan, in collaboration with “Il Sole 24 Ore”, in order to “launch” the 2013 edition of SPS IPC Drives Italia (May 21st-23rd, Parma). The topic of the conference: gaining international markets for Italy’s excellent production.

Expanding our prospects with an increasingly European scope, and looking to new business models that favor the concept of “coopetition” (cooperation that also involves one’s competitors, making it possible to create a win-win scenario) were the strategies on which Aldo Bonomi, founder and director of the Aster research institute, Detlef Braun, member of the Messe Frankfurt board of directors and Donald Wich, managing director of Messe Frankfurt Italia, focused, in their opening speeches. On this topic, a valuable example was made of Messe Frankfurt itself, which has been attempting to transfer to Italy Germany’s promising export model, which is the result of partnerships among manufacturers, trade associations and fair organizers.

Aside from the marked differences between German and Italian capitalism, the latter mainly consisting in manufacturing and closely connected to the territory, Bonomi then posed a crucial question: after the crisis, will this type of capitalism still enable Italy’s manufacturing sector to remain the second most important one in Europe? Born with Fiat and Olivetti, Italian capitalism developed in areas of heavily concentrated production which are now undergoing a transformation.
According to Bonomi «today, Italy’s territorial capitalism can be wholly accounted for within 19 zones, such as Via Emilia, the Alpine arch, the slopes around Turin and Trieste, the Adriatic cities, the Tuscany-Umbria-Marche axis and the Apulia axis, whose survival will depend fundamentally on exports», and in the same way, the choice of a fair event location that guarantees the greatest visibility internationally.

The topic of internationalization as a management approach distinct from that of territorial manufacturing was also taken up at the round table discussions that followed the panel discussion. In the first of two, “Italian enterprises toward foreign markets”, experiences and success stories were shared, such as the case of Gefran, which, from a small workshop has become a market leader that, in the words of its president Ennio Franceschetti, recognizes the necessity of deciding whether to grow or remain small «because - he states - if I look at my concern on the backdrop of its surroundings, it looks big, but in reality it is small in terms of the European context».

On the other hand, the second meeting focused on “Strategies for internationalization: uncertainty, opportunity and new scenarios”, with a testimonial from Giuliano Busetto, president of Anie AssoAutomazione, who demonstrated the necessity of «getting the most out of the Italian manufacturer, made up of people, ideas and excellent products, by employing fairs as effectively as possible as a valid tool for obtaining this result».
The speakers were thus in agreement in maintaining that fairs can function as a decisive medium in the internationalization process, considering that fairs account for 20% of Italian export transactions.
Emblematic of this is the experience of SPS IPC Drives Italia, which, in just a few of years, has established itself as a point of reference for the automation sector, becoming a reliable and secure platform for achieving internationalization objectives. It remains the only fair held in Italy by Messe Frankfurt Italia, which, by listening to the needs to the sector leaders, and in seeking a suitable niche, has managed to create a project adapted to the Italian market, converting a successful German format into an unmistakably Italian event.