Son of street vendor whose clothing brand became a household name
Vincenzo Monti, an entrepreneur whose Monti clothing became one of the biggest mass-market fashion brands in Italy in the 1960s, was born on this day in 1906 in Civitella del Tronto, a medieval hilltop town in the Abruzzo region.
The Monti logo as it appeared on 500,000 garments
a year produced at the company's peak in the '60s
At its peak, his company, Monti Confezioni d'Abruzzo, employed over 4,000 workers in three large factories, turning out 500,000 garments a year, supplying not just Italy, but exporting to the rest of Europe and the United States.
Monti opened their own flagship department stores - Grandi Magazzini Monti - as well as boutiques in Rome, L'Aquila, Chieti and Ascoli Piceno. Recognising a market for ready-to-wear fashion at affordable prices, and harnessing the power of TV advertising, Vincenzo turned the Monti brand into a household name.
It was a business phenomenon built on humble beginnings, Vincenzo taking over his father Attilio’s modest textile business in Civitella del Tronto at the age of just 15.
Attilio sold rolls of fabric via street markets in Abruzzo and the neighbouring Marche region. In the Italian tradition, Vincenzo, an only child, was always destined to take over from his father in running the business but the moment he would do so was brought forward when his father suffered an accident and was forced to retire.
Despite his lack of education, having left school at 11, Vincenzo not only maintained the business but expanded it, investing in a truck as soon as he was old enough to drive and, after the family moved from Civitella to the coastal city of Pescara, transitioning from street vending to become a wholesale supplier at the age of just 24. It was not long afterwards that he opened a shop, selling fabrics directly to the public.
.jpg "Vincenzo Monti took over his father's textile business at the age of 15") |
| Vincenzo Monti took over his father's textile business at the age of 15 |
Yet the conflict ultimately became the turning point for Vincenzo’s business as money was pumped into Italy’s post-war regeneration.
He had already decided that selling fabrics had its limitations and believed that increasingly fashion-conscious Italian customers were ready to move away from buying clothes from old-fashioned tailors and embrace ready-to-wear.
Using funding provided by the Cassa per il Mezzogiorno - a government initiative aimed at developing Southern Italy - Vincenzo founded Monti srl in 1950 and opened his first factory manufacturing finished garments in Pescara the following year, providing employment, in the offices and on the shop floor, for 200 people.
Within three years, with sales going well, he had built a much bigger, state-of-the-art manufacturing plant in Roseto degli Abruzzi, just along the coast from Pescara, employing another 300 people, and officially launched Monti Confezioni Spa.
His ambition, though, was to grow bigger still. To that end, he travelled to the United States to study American mass-production factories. On returning to Italy, he completely modernised his clothing production.
Monti’s factories were soon equipped with mainframe computers from Olivetti to automatically calculate and process garment patterns. This dramatically reduced production times and slashed costs, allowing the company to sell high-quality garments at a fraction of the price compared with traditional tailors.
 |
| Monti Confezioni's headquarters in the Porta Nuova area of Pescara now houses offices and apartments |
Monti Confezioni commercials were shown several times during the show and it was not long before viewers could recite the company’s slogans without even seeing the ads. ‘Monti: abiti belli, abiti pronti’ - Monti: beautiful clothes, ready-to-wear clothes - became part of the shopper’s vocabulary.
The company cemented its 1960s dominance by adding storefronts to its assembly lines in the form of its Grandi Magazzini Monti department stores and a chain of brand-exclusive retail boutiques across major cities, including Rome. In Pescara, two of the city’s best-known tailors - Mariani and Tritapepe - were effectively put out of business by Monti’s success.
In 1969, in nearby Montesilvano, Vincenzo built a new plant, which began operations in 1970 employing 2,000 workers, producing for the most part high-quality men's jackets and coats.
Perhaps what marked Vincenzo Monti as a successful businessman was that, as well as having an eye for an opportunity, he knew when the time was right to walk away. By 1974, only four years after the Montesilvano plant had gone online, he had sold the business to ENI, the state-owned oil company that was diversifying into textiles.
There were a number of factors. Increasingly hostile relations between employers and the trade unions in the late 1960s led to strikes and demonstrations that badly affected production, forcing the company to lay off 500 workers.
At the same time, the landscape of Italian fashion began to shift away from industrial mass production to high-end designers, such as Armani and Versace. As labels began to acquire as much importance as the garment itself, manufacturers such Monti began to be seen as somewhat downmarket.
Vincenzo, whose wife, Domenica, gave him two sons, Orlando and Attilio, and a daughter, Olga, stepped away from the clothes business, becoming president of the Banca Popolare di Teramo e Città Sant'Angelo, based in Teramo - about 20km (12 miles) from his birthplace in Civitella del Tronto.
He used his personal wealth in charitable projects in his later years, including a substantial contribution in cash and clothing to help the victims of the 1980 Irpinia earthquake. He died in February, 1981, at the age of 74.
Travel tip:
The skyline of Civitella del Tronto is dominated
by the massive 16th century fortress
Civitella del Tronto, where Vincenzo Monti was born, is an historic hilltop town in the province of Teramo, in Abruzzo region, about 25km (16 miles) inland from the Adriatic coast and a similar distance southeast of the city of Ascoli Piceno. Perched dramatically on a travertine cliff at an altitude of 590m (1,936ft) above sea level, within the Gran Sasso e Monti della Laga National Park, it has a well preserved medieval centre and is officially listed among I Borghi più belli d'Italia (The Most Beautiful Villages of Italy). The town is dominated by the huge Fortezza di Civitella del Tronto, which is the largest fortress in Italy and the second largest in Europe, occupying 25,000msq and stretching for 500m. It was built in the 16th century by King Philip II of Spain over an existing medieval castle, sitting on the border between the Kingdom of Naples and the Papal States. It was famously the last bastion of the Bourbon Kingdom of the Two Sicilies to surrender to the Piedmontese forces during the Unification of Italy, put under siege but not capitulating until March 20, 1861 - three days after the official proclamation of the unified Kingdom of Italy. The fortress, which houses a museum of historical weapons, offers spectacular views from its ramparts. In the village, a maze of alleys between stone-built houses, look out for La Ruetta, which is recognised as one of the narrowest streets in Italy, barely wide enough for a single person to squeeze along.
Stay in Civitella del Tronto with Expedia
Travel tip:
Pescara Vecchia, the city's historic quarter, draws
visitors to its bars, restaurants and nightlife
Pescara, where Vincenzo Monti built his business, is a city of almost 120,000 people on the Adriatic in the Abruzzo region. It is known for its 10 miles of clean, sandy beaches, yet is only 50km (31 miles) from the Gran Sasso mountain range, the snow-capped peaks of which are visible even from the coast on a clear winter’s day. The city is the birthplace of the poet, patriot and military leader, Gabriele D’Annunzio. His childhood home, the Casa Natale di Gabriele D’Annunzio, which can be found in the historic centre of the city on the south side of the Fiume Pescara, which bisects the city, houses a museum about his life and works. The Museo delle Genti d'Abruzzo has exhibitions on regional industries like ceramics and olive oil. Pieces by Miró and Picasso are on view at the Vittoria Colonna Museum of Modern Art. The city’s old quarter, known as Pescara Vecchia, has become a bustling hub of nightlife with wine bars and restaurants lining Corso Manthonè, the menus of many of which feature the local arrosticini - charcoal-grilled mutton skewers. Being by the sea, many fish and seafood dishes are also on offer. The city straddles the Pescara river, which can be crossed near its mouth by the Ponte del Mare, a cable-supported cycle and pedestrian bridge which, at 466m (1,529ft), is the longest such bridge in Italy and one of the longest in Europe. It was built, in part, to facilitate the continuity of the Adriatic Cycle Route, which stretches from Trieste in the north all the way down to Santa Maria di Leuca at the southernmost tip of Puglia, a distance of around 1,000 miles (1,600km).
Pescara accommodation by Hotels.com
More reading:
How Luciano Benetton turned a family clothing company into a worldwide success story
Nino Cerruti, the budding journalist who became a fashion giant
Why designer Roberto Capucci rejected ready-to-wear
Also on this day:
1490: The birth of musician and priest Bernardo Pisano
1492: The death of Renaissance painter Piero della Francesca
1812: The birth of chemist Ascanio Sobrero
1935: The birth of tenor Luciano Pavarotti
2006: The death of film director Gillo Pontecorvo