Amid the institutional silence, Cicciobello speaks Chinese

The link between ‘Made in Italy’ and ‘Made in China’ has always been very strong, but now this link is set to become even closer: on the one hand, there are the Chinese factories in Guangdong, where Italian toys have been manufactured for thirty years; on the other, there is an agreement signed on 13 July at Palazzo Piacentini, which effectively places Giochi Preziosi (a long-established Italian toy manufacturer) under the control of a Chinese company. This is Super Hisen, a major Asian toy supplier that was already working with Giochi Preziosi as a manufacturer. Super Hisen is now set to acquire a stake in the Italian company with an investment of around 80 million euros, and will also take over the management of the group.

The backdrop is a composition-with-creditors procedure before the Court of Milan; technically, therefore, this is a rescue rather than a triumph. The plan involves a new operating company, provisionally named Newco GP, which will take over the business and commercial debts, funded by Chinese investors and other investors yet to be secured. Enrico Preziosi’s family is gradually stepping back from the venture; in 1978, they had built up Italy’s leading operator in the sector, first around Cicciobello, then the Gormiti and Disney and Pokémon licences. A brand that has shaped generations of Italian children is passing into the hands of those who physically produced it, and the handover is taking place amid institutional silence from the Ministry of Enterprise and Made in Italy, which makes no mention in its press release of the nationality of the company taking over, referring generically in its official statement to an ‘international investor’.

Not that there were likely any alternatives: at present, the only available liquidity in the sector can come from Shenzhen, and certainly no domestic investor has come forward with 80 million and an industrial vision. The rhetoric of ‘Made in Italy’ reaches its practical limits here, given that ‘Made in Italy’ toys have long been Chinese-assembled products bearing a Lombardy brand, and the new deal merely formalises, at the shareholding level, a dependency that already existed in terms of production. The key issue remains one that the ministry’s press release glosses over. The agreement safeguards the wholesale sector, employing between 800 and 900 people, whilst leaving between 100 and 150 workers in the company’s own shops in limbo; they are currently on furlough and outside the scope of the turnaround plan. These are the employees of the most visible and least profitable part of the business – the shop-front that the industrial buyer has no interest in taking over. The rescue plan concerns the supply chain, certainly not the physical presence across the country, which, in the age of online retail, is regarded as a dead weight for business owners.

The court’s approval is expected following the submission of the plan on 6 August. Meanwhile, this case adds to a growing list of instances where struggling Italian companies find a future only thanks to foreign capital – increasingly from China – whilst the public sector supports transactions it lacks the tools to steer. The toys with which children across the peninsula grow up still bear Italian labels on their boxes, but decisions on their fate are now being made in Chinese.