The prestigious international magazine Auto&Design, run by Silvia Baruffaldi, dedicates another article to Mario Levi, illustrating the company’s development in recent years, in its 2015 September/October issue.
The article goes back to the topics discussed in a previous meeting with the company during which executives and creatives illustrated business prospects and style visions, suggesting that they had great developments in mind for the future, though at the cost of courageously daring investments.
Two years later, the strategy bore its fruits, as highlighted by the company’s quality manager Marco Bramardi, who explains how “with the expansion of the Chiampo plant and the opening of a new site in Zermeghedo, both in the Vicenza area, the production cycle takes place entirely in-house. This allows us to have direct control over all the processes”.
This is confirmed by Guido Levi Gattinara, who is satisfied when he stresses the fact that “working with a far-sighted approach allows us to find solutions to today’s increasingly pressing problems”.
“When it was necessary to invest, we agreed that it would be a massive operation. It was the only way to face the manufacturing demands looking ahead,” says Elisa Levi Gattinara, who adds:
“However, Mario Levi’s ultimate goal, as stated in the article by Silvio jr. Suppa, is to preserve the dual nature of the company, which has always been able to deal with both the tanning of the raw material and the subsequent processing operations up to the manufacturing of seat covers according to current market complexities.
“The needs of car manufacturers have deeply changed over recent years. Just think that currently an increasing number of cars are designed with seats featuring mixed upholstery in leather and other materials, which resulted in a substantial increase in demand, but also a considerable diversification of production skills,” says the group’s Chief Operations Manager Lele Ogliaro. According to the journalist, these words reveal all the modernity of a horizon that seems to be increasingly less confined to the exclusivity of the saloon cars of the past: combinations with other materials, surface treatments and experimentation with textures are the keys that open up the doors to the future for hide.
This modern and forward-thinking approach of Mario Levi are tangibly represented in some recently manufactured cars such as, among others, the Ford Vignale and the new Alfa Romeo, in which – as explained to the magazine by Maja Petrovic, the sales manager who it also takes care of studying colours and materials, “the holes and hot printing of elaborate patterns are, for example, one of our strongest skills, which we have offered and implemented in production on latest generation cars”. But that’s not all, because – as anticipated by the magazine – the latest promising finding of research encapsulates the fascinating feel of an authentic tactile and visual surprise: Feeltek, an innovative ‘vegan’ material we will hear about very soon.
In short, once again, when we are welcomed in a business like Mario Levi, established in 1946 and the actual creator of some of the best leather upholstery in the automotive world, we are still fascinated and struck by the fact that the pressure of tradition blend perfectly with a both unprecedented and extraordinary trust in innovation.
