Olympic Ski-Boot Capital Montebelluna Ends Slide With Designers

Olympic Ski-Boot Capital Montebelluna Ends Slide With Designers

2006-02-22 03:30 (New York)
By Gregory Viscusi Feb. 22 (Bloomberg) -- The skiers in the men's giant slalomthis week at the Turin Winter Olympics came from 43 countries onfive continents. Every boot they wore was designed in the ItalianAlps, 250 miles east in Montebelluna. The town of 30,000, northwest of Venice, is home to theworld's largest ski-boot makers, including Tecnica SpA and theboot units of Amer Sports Oyj's Salomon brand and QuiksilverInc.'s Skis Rossignol. Companies in and around Montebellunaproduced 183 million euros ($218 million) of ski boots last year. Montebelluna, a shoe-making center since the 17th century,became the world ski-boot capital in the 1970s after localcompany Nordica, now a Tecnica brand, perfected a technique formaking plastic boots. It is maintaining that dominance with theexpertise of its designers, even as bootmakers move production tothe Czech Republic, Romania and China to cut costs. ``For Montebelluna, the future is to keep the real valueadded, which isn't manufacturing,'' says Maurizio Di Trani, 43,Tecnica's head of marketing. ``There's generation upon generationof sports-shoe makers here.'' While American Bob Lange invented the first plastic boot inColorado, Nordica developed a way to inject, rather than pour,plastic into the molds, eliminating air bubbles and speeding upthe process. The technique made mass-market plastic bootspossible, signaling the end of heavy leather boots that becamewater-logged and provided little ankle support.
Buckles and Fabric Linings
Ski-boot production in Montebelluna jumped from 1 million in1970 to 4 million in 1980 as competitors in Austria, France,Germany and the U.S. closed factories and bought companies in theItalian town to get their hands on the new technology. Montebelluna's factories made about 75 percent of theworld's ski boots the last time the Olympics were held in theAlps, at Albertville, France, in 1994. Now only about a quarterof the 4.2 million boots produced annually are made there. As they moved production east, Tecnica, Salomon, SkisRossignol, and Head NV of Austria left their design, research andmarketing units in Montebelluna to take advantage of localexpertise. Fischer GmbH, a closely-held Austrian company, inSeptember opened its own 18-person design office in Montebelluna. The town is home to 100 companies that design ski boots,produce the equipment used to stamp out plastic shells, and makecomponents such as buckles and fabric linings. ``It's a unique place,'' says Max Alfthan, 44, a senior vicepresident at Helsinki-based Amer Sports, which also makes Atomicskis and Wilson tennis rackets and golf clubs. ``In one place,you find experts on every aspect of ski boots.''
Industry Clusters
The ski-boot companies also draw on a pool of talent in thetown's shoe industry, which counts 108 companies. Montebelluna is home to soccer-shoe makers Diadora-InvictaSpA and Lotto Sport Italia SpA, as well as Geox SpA, which becameItaly's largest shoemaker with its patented ventilated soles. The town is one of 199 Italian districts whose economieshave thrived by focusing on one industry and pooling expertise.They produce 46 percent of Italy's exports and account for 27percent of the country's economic output, according to Marco DiTommaso, professor of industrial economics and policy at theUniversity of Ferrara. He says competition from China threatensmany of the districts today. Italy is the world's largest tilemaker, with 80 percent ofthe production coming from around Sassuolo, near Bologna. Most ofthe world's designer eyeglasses are made near Belluno in thenortheast. Small companies based around Padova make women's shoesfor luxury goods companies such as Paris-based LVMH Moet HennessyLouis Vuitton SA and the Gucci unit of Paris-based PPR SA.
What Crisis?
Treviso, the province where Montebelluna is located,produced 18.9 billion euros of goods and services in 2003, 16thamong Italy's 103 provinces, according to the Italian StatisticsInstitute in Rome. The province accounted for 1.6 percent ofItaly's 1.2 trillion-euro economy that year. Top-ranked Milangenerated 10 percent of Italy's production. In Montebelluna, the number of shoe workers has remainedsteady at about 8,000 for the past decade as factory jobs werereplaced by design and management positions in companies such asGeox, which now employs 500 people, says Aldo Durante, directorof Montebelluna Sportsystem, a trade group. ``You would think the district would be in crisis after thedominant position it had 10 years ago,'' says Giorgio Brunetti, aprofessor at Milan's Bocconi University who studies Italy'ssystem of towns specializing in one industry. ``ButMontebelluna's strength is that while production has delocalized,the value added it can provide hasn't.''
Sports Cars, Jets and Boots
Competition between ski-boot makers now centers on smallinnovations. Ever since rear-entry boots went out of fashion inthe early 1990s and Skis Rossignol's use of softer materialsfailed to catch on, most ski boots look similar, with top entryand four buckles. Calzaturificio Dal Bello Srl, the fifth-largest maker of skiboots, is working with U.S. mogul skier Glen Plake to developboots for freestyle skiing that are rigid laterally but allowsome forward flex. The company still makes its boots in Asolo, atown next to Montebelluna. Head has patented a mechanism that automatically convertsfrom a flexible ankle for walking to an immobile one for skiingby stepping into the ski binding. It has also patented a bucklewith an extra lever to make it easier to shut. While Head produced its last ski boot in Montebelluna lastyear, workrooms off the main factory floor still hum withactivity. In one, four men sketch ideas for boots on paper andcomputers while surrounded by posters and models of the sportscars, fighter jets and racing bikes that inspire them.
65 Models
In another room, men and women in white coats use 19th-century carving tools and knives to create prototypes.Eventually, they will make molds to try out various components.In April, before the last snows melt at Italian ski resorts, 10part-time ski instructors will test the new designs. Head makes 65 different standard ski-boot models and anadditional 30 for specific markets or retailers, in line with theaverage for the biggest producers, says Alberto Cenedesi, 45,marketing director at HTM Sport SpA, Head's Italian unit. Itcosts about 1.4 million euros to develop a new boot, he says. At the Olympics, Austria's Benjamin Raich won the men'sgiant slalom in Atomic boots. Racing boots consist of normalshells worn several sizes too small and fitted with very thinliners. Technicians carve out the insides of each boot to betterfit the skiers' feet. ``Most people want their feet to be comfortable,'' Tecnica'sDi Trani says. ``Racers couldn't care less about comfort. Theywant to feel the ski. It's all over in two minutes.''
--With reporting by Chiara Remondini in Milan and GiovanniSalzano in Rome. Editors: Pozsgay (wsm)