Sometimes, new challenges arise from misadventures. This was the case for Vitale Bramani, a great mountain enthusiast. We are in the thirties, on a group excursion to Punta Rasica, in Val Masino, when it begins to snow. Vitale is the only one able to return to the valley to call for help. On his return, however, someone could not resist. Since then, his life mission has become to find a safe and comfortable way to walk (in the mountains and beyond) even in extreme conditions. So he gave his friend Leopoldo Pirelli the design of a sole with a particular shape, today we would call it a lug, made specifically to have good traction and good grip. Vibram, an Italian manufacturer of footwear components, was born this way and even today the 55 million pairs of soles produced every year are reminiscent of that challenge.
This story of passion and entrepreneurship was told by Marco Guazzoni – Vibram's sustainability director for about seven years after managing research and development – to the students of the MSBA Master, the first testimony of a cycle that accompanies the module of the path dedicated to sustainable innovation. We asked Guazzoni to tell us a few more details about what it means for an Italian company with 800 employees to walk, if not run, towards sustainability.
What is the link between sustainability and innovation that emerges from your story?
Almost ninety years ago, there was a need to radically change the way we go to the mountains, to make this activity more sustainable, first and foremost in terms of safety: thus, each of us, today, must set ourselves the challenge of polluting a little less, improving what has been done before and thinking about products and processes from a different perspective. It is a theme of sustainability intrinsic to what we do every day, with the awareness that it is a journey.
Why is it a journey?
The completely sustainable product does not exist, there is always an impact and it is useless to hide behind absolute statements: instead, there is a product that is more sustainable than before, because we are more aware of the challenge. For us it is an approach that has always existed precisely because, coming from the mountains, the environmental side has always been one of the fulcrums of the company.
And on the social side?
Social attention is reflected in attention to the needs of the consumer but also to those of employees: it is a typical attitude of Italian family businesses, which take care of the human aspect not only thinking about profit.
So what is your model for innovation?
We are born from innovation, the sole itself is an innovation that pushes you to always do something different, creating a new technology or material that allows you to solve a need. This is why our model is based on a very simple concept: the customer highlights his new needs, we create the solutions and propose them to the shoe manufacturers, who make the finished product.
How do you intercept new needs?
Listening and feedback are constant, we have several Tester Teams in Europe, America and Asia. It's a collection of hundreds of professionals with different needs – runners, mountaineers, firefighters, oil rig operators and so on – who test our soles to the extreme, giving us indications on consumption, durability as well as improvements to be implemented in intensive use, which identify the next level of innovation.
Innovation, from cost to investment.
Here another characteristic of Italian family businesses emerges: there is an ownership that makes far-sighted choices but, at the same time, is ready to "throw its heart over the obstacle": we often carry out projects in which the cost of the operation is not economically sustainable, the price would be too high, but the priority is to develop the idea. Sometimes, solutions remain in the drawer because the market is not yet ready, waiting for technology to allow us to implement them at acceptable costs for the market.
What is the balance between sustainability and profitability?
It is one of the key passages of my testimonies in which I talk about our company to students: sustainability is both attention to people, the environment and profitability.
In what sense?
If a company invests in sustainability and then, in times of crisis, cuts it because it is actually considered an excessive cost, it means that it is not generating true sustainability. He is probably doing green washing or, in any case, he is telling something to clear his conscience.
So what is true sustainability?
Sustainability in the company for us should be understood as a constant search for efficiency, elimination of waste and reduction of consumption in production processes. We in the sustainability department bring out best practices, dictate guidelines and principles to ensure that everyone in their daily work can take a look that, together with productivity and profit, takes into account other factors that help change something by improving performance.
For example?
Without getting too technical, however, the sole vulcanizes for pressure, time and temperature: it is possible to act on these three variables to obtain the same excellent result with fewer emissions thanks to environmental criteria that are not only those of production speed and productivity.
It is not the first time that Vibram meets ALTIS, what experience was it?
Young people, in addition to being the consumers of tomorrow, give us many ideas to always stay fresh and innovative. Opening horizons is very important to us and therefore we are very pleased to be able to meet the group of university students, who know little about us. Then there are also positive unforeseen events. A few days ago, a student I met at ALTIS applied for an internship with us because she was impressed by our story last year.
Article by Nicola Varcasia