The SPIN OFF spoke with Enzo Fusco, owner and founder FGF Industry, the Italian company behind brands such as Blauer USA and Ten C among others. He explained some of his next strategies including ecominded-focused ones.
We do offer sustainable products, which are especially appreciated by our international clients. Also, Italian ones are showing an interest for such products. They are slower in that but also reacting.
In general, our customers appreciate items that don’t carry natural fur trimmings–apart from Eastern European customers who continue asking for that. Also increasingly successful are pieces that are not padded with natural down.
Also, highly accepted and increasingly requested are jackets made with Repreve, a nylon fabric obtained from recycling PET bottles.
It’s mostly our youngest clients, the most sensitive and educated ones to this aspect as looking for alternative materials with a lower impact on the environment.
What other projects have you been working on?
This season we have relaunched BPD (Be Proud of This Dress), a brand offering lightweight jackets. This selection of jackets is made with a special water-resistant technical material and padded with a special material also used for US military apparel, that is 10% lighter than down, but as light and soft as down. Our aim is to sell it worldwide, especially in countries like France, Germany and Korea, in addition to Italy.
That brand has doubled its sales since I bought it. We have presented it within a multimedia event we held during the last Pitti Uomo inside the Fortezza. For this season we have widened its offer by including more items like knitwear and trousers, in addition to our beautiful jackets made with the special Japanese high-density nylon OJJ.
Is the choice to offer eco-friendly products a winning one?
I would say so, as we are registering an increase of the sustainable products we sell by about 10-15% more every season.
Obviously, our growth is especially supported by offering our brands internationally. In general, and especially, through Blauer, our aim is to expand in Asia, and especially in Korea and Asia. Another market where we want to grow is Chile, where we will start expanding by next June-July through our partner. Another project we also want to grow and nurture is Nylolite. We want to also make it grow in Germany through the Atelier agency from Berlin.
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