FIDENZA, Italy – Italian contemporary brand Pinko — and its parent company Cris Conf SpA — are committed to elevate their social corporate responsibility policy.
Pinko’s chief executive officer Pietro Negra unveiled on Monday at the firm’s headquarters here a new project called Pinko Take Care aimed at providing employees with free-of-charge medical services.
The Take Care initiative includes annual blood screenings and medical examinations (for cardiovascular, urological and oncological diseases offered to employees on-site) and is carried out through a partnership with Italian digital startup Medical Box, allowing patients to book their examinations online, and with Fora, the country’s leading company for mobile diagnosis systems.
“We invested around 350,000 euros for one year of running this project in Italy alone, as we believe institutions are often lacking in answering to citizens’ needs. Private companies should try to offer their support,” said Negra, noting that the project was first tested in June at the company’s headquarters in Fidenza and registered a 90 percent compliance rate.
Negra expressed his commitment to extend Take Care to all the company’s employees worldwide and said he is already “working on this…although such a project challenges us on many levels.” The firm currently employs around 1,200 people, half of whom are based abroad, mainly in the retail sector.
The executive underscored that the project is in line with previous initiatives that took into account the sustainability of workspaces. Erected in 2005 with a project by Italian architect Guido Canali, the plant in Fidenza, covering a 193,750 square-foot area, includes offices and a warehouse and is flanked by utility spaces for employees. Among these are a nursery school for 50 children aged one to three and a restaurant — instead of a canteen — located at the center of the main building “to establish it as a socializing space,” said Negra, where freshly prepared meals are served daily.
In order to further enhance the company’s green agenda, upcoming projects include installing photovoltaic panels for the plant “to be energetically independent and self-sufficient,” noted Canali, as well as the development of a 4.3 million square-foot space behind the main plant to create leisure areas including a fitness center and a botanical garden, which Negra expects to unveil in the next two to three years.
The Pinko headquarters in Fidenza.
Courtesy Photo.
Green spaces have already been largely employed throughout the plant’s area including green alleys, roof gardens and open-space offices overseeing the bank of the Stirone river. All this was planted to “protect the landscape’s view from the overflow of man-made architecture,” argued Canali, who has developed projects for a range of other companies including Prada, Smeg and Maglificio Gran Sasso. Prada’s latest complex in Tuscany’s Valvigna is also similarly nestled among trellises covered in grapevines and mulberries, pomegranates and jujubes, with beds of lavender, trees and climbing plants.
Negra underscored that the company’s sensibility toward green topics grew out of personal and family values and insisted “our goal is to be generous toward the environment…this is not just a marketing project. Running a family business prevents us from [having] too much pressure; it’s a kind of luxury we can allow ourselves to have,” he said, also praising local institutions and companies operating in the area, which have demonstrated to be highly committed to the preservation of the environment.
To wit, beauty company Davines will open its newest plant, called Davines Village on Wednesday a few kilometers north of Parma. The 387,500 square-foot manufacturing site will feature sustainable solutions and its opening will also coincide with the unveiling of the Kilometro Zero project: a 6.8-mile path along the A1 motorway where around 22,000 trees are being planted to reduce pollution. “It’s a project of continuity, to transform Parma into an open city, ready for the challenges set by the European Union and those of green economy,” said Stefania Bollati, who along with her family runs the Davines company.
Pinko’s parent company Cris Conf SpA closed 2017 with revenues in the region of 210 million euros and is expected to register single-digit growth in 2018. Negra underscored that retail and foreign markets are gaining momentum, the latter accounting for 60 percent of sales.
With around 200 directly operated flagships worldwide and a number of corners at shopping malls, the brand’s expansion will include the opening of 30 new locations by the end of 2019, including six new doors in China and one at London’s Regent Street. Along with targeting and “consolidating markets where we are already present and strong,” which include Europe, the Far East and China, the company is targeting Japan and the U.S.
In the U.S., the brand is present with four banners in New York and Miami, as well as with a temporary shop at Neiman Marcus in Las Vegas and a corner at Bloomingdale’s New York, which was inaugurated last week.