From Vespas the Italians graduated to Fiats; from radios they went to TV sets. Now the big move is on in appliances. Refrigerators and washing machines are being installed in Italian homes at a pace that is rapidly building new industries and destroying old customs. Italian refrigerator production has risen to 1,750,000 yearly (v. only 30,000 ten years ago), enabling Italy to edge out West Germany as Europe's leading producer. Washing-machine sales are rising so fast that they are catching up with refrigerators, and stores can hardly keep in stock any labor-saving appliance, from a vacuum cleaner to a floor polisher.
Cold Fire. Italian refrigerator makers have become so efficient that last year they grabbed 22.5% of refrigerator sales in France, which quickly forgot the togetherness of the Common Market and threw up temporary tariff walls. Such firms as Fiat, Zanussi, Zoppas and Indesit have cashed in on the ice-cube boom by turning to making refrigerators, but none of them have been able to match the success of the Ignis Co., which has risen from obscurity to become Italy's biggest refrigerator producer. With sales of $65 million (a third from exports), Ignis now accounts for 34% of all refrigerator production in Italy.
Ignis was built by Giovanni Borghi, 52, who had a small appliance business with his father before World War II, started building a plant near Milan before the shooting was over in anticipation of a postwar demand for consumer goods. The company's first product was an electric range (Ignis means fire in Latin), but Borghi switched to refrigerators ten years ago. He has since expanded so fast that his factories continually smell of fresh paint. A stocky, bull-necked man who occasionally strips to the waist and works on a machine in his factory, Borghi relentlessly replaced men with machines, made his company so efficient that it now sells a bigger refrigerator (4.25 cu. ft.) for $95 than it used to sell for $250.
Sugar Candy. If every Italian housewife now hankers for a refrigerator, she wants a washing machine almost as badly; nowadays no self-respecting maid can be induced to work in an
Italian household without one. Borghi has come out with his own line of washing machines, but he is up against a competitor who is just as sharp at cost cutting and underselling as he is: the Candy Co. of Brugherio, also near Milan. In four years Candy has expanded production from 200 washing machines a day to 1,400 and, despite a rise of 55% in labor costs, dropped the prices on its semiautomatic model by $35—to $140.
Candy's sweet success is the handiwork of the Fumagalli brothers—Niso, 55; Enzo, 48; and Peppino, 34—who took over their father's forsaken electrical apparatus factory after the war and made Candy an Italian household word with hard-selling sales and advertising campaigns. The Fumagallis originally intended to make dishwashers, but Enzo had been impressed by the popularity of washing machines in the U.S. while a prisoner of war in California. He named the company after a once-popular U.S. song that begins: "Candy, I call my sugar candy." Last year Candy took 40% of the Italian washing-machine market.
No end is in sight for Italy's appliance revolution, since only 30% of Italian families so far own refrigerators and only 9% washing machines. Most of the machines sold to date are small, rather austere models that would not be considered family size in the U.S., and the appliance industry looks to a golden future of upgrading their customers to better ones. "Just think what we can do," says Borghi, "when Italy moves into the age of the Deepfreeze."
Comes to the Rescue!
