Tuscany to have new leathergoods school
The new president of Italy’s leathergoods manufacturers’ association, Claudia Sequi, has said Tuscany could soon have a dedicated training facility for leather artisans.
In an interview with business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, Ms Sequi, who was elected last month as the new president of Assopellettieri, said she hoped to make a formal announcement about the new training facility in October.
Claudia Sequi is part of the Tuscan leather products industry; she runs Florence-based handbag brand Claudia Firenze.
In her comments to the newspaper, she said she admired the work that many big luxury brands are doing in running their own in-house training programmes for new generations of leathergoods craftspeople. “But we also have to think about small and medium-sized manufacturers,” she said, “because they are not able to do this.”
She said she admired, too, the way leathergoods producers in Lombardy were supporting and finding new, well qualified, skilled workers from training provider ASLAM. Leathergoods is one of the sectors that ASLAM supports at its campus in Milan (see image). Through a programme called Ispel, it runs three- and four-year courses in leathergoods production.
“We would like to have a similar school in Tuscany,” the Assopellettieri president said, “and I hope to be able to announce ours at our leathergoods ‘state of the industry’ conference in Florence on October 17.”
