etic.a prints labels in Pomezia: 10 years of continuous growth pursuing a completely transparent corporate ethics with collaborators, suppliers and customers, because only by creating value inside and outside the company, respecting codes of integrity common to the whole team, you work better and the fruits of this commitment are gathered over time…
We meet Patrizia Windfang and Gianni Olivieri co-founders of etic.a on a hot June day. We are welcomed in the brand-new headquarters of the company, much larger than the historical site both in the part relating to offices and in the one that houses press room and warehouse: a gift for its 10 years of activity. “Our label company has been active for many years: we were born in July 2009, but we come from a long experience as distributors of weighing and control instruments by Mettler Toledo. Over time we realized that label industry was very lively and growing and we decided to develop this new project, so etic.a was born”, says Gianni. “The genesis of the name expresses the fact that the company wants to be ethical in its behavior; the point was inserted to diversify the word graphically and to recall the self-adhesive label”. In the company you breathe a pleasant air, that smells of respect, responsibility and commitment, spread throughout the team: from people involved in marketing, the sparkling Roberta Quero, to Luca Incagnoli, a management engineer, serious but with the impetuosity of young people, to Sergio Pasquini, production manager who, from decades of experience in the converting sector, proudly shows us the new machines and to printers, the fantastic young men Leonardo and Cristiano who manage digital printing, to Patrizia and Stefania, “the girls” who manage customer care and up to Manuel, warehouse worker. Patrizia and Gianni, a philosopher and an engineer, have given life to a company that wants to be a protagonist in the Italian label sector. “Etic.a operates respecting people and suppliers, following the general rule of transparency: for us, the team of collaborators is the most precious resource, because machines without people do not have the possibility to express their potential. To achieve a result, it is necessary to share common experiences: so that those who know less can learn from those who know more, establishing in this way a virtuous circle; I am convinced that the task and goal of every entrepreneur is to build value, and people are the most important value”, says Gianni.
With regard to the sales force, etic.a has made a very precise choice, as Patrizia explains: “we are present throughout the country through our commercial representatives. We have chosen to have only direct salesmen, because we hope that in their work they are above all responsible, they know how to get involved and if necessary, they can say no to the customer with tact but with decision. With internal salesmen we think we create greater involvement and attachment to our company-team”.
The reference sectors are food industry (in all your variations), cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and automotive. The goal of offering quality products is also achieved thanks to the work of a graphic department able to optimize the files coming from outside and, when needed, add a pinch of creativity in terms of design.
“We have always believed in association”, Patrizia continues, “and we joined Gipea straight away, which gathers self-adhesive label companies within Assografici. From 2018 we are present in the Steering Committee and we try to give our contribution to the development of a base of rules shared by all the members”.
Technology aimed to a development project
In October 2018, digital printing arrived at etic.a: Domino N610i web inkjet solution, which allows the company to be more reactive in the small and medium run market and at the same time to reduce time to market. During our visit we see, by chance, a print with a nice opaque white, and digital printing operators explain to us that “this high opacity white, obtained thanks to the double print head, is really what we need for certain applications, even because we can use a wide range of standard self-adhesive media for labels, including coated paper, polypropylene and polyethylene, without need of primer application”.
In the productive part there are 4 printing machines and one for finishing, all supplied by Brescia based manufacturer Lombardi, with whom has been created a relationship of great collaboration and trust. And
obviously the machines that print today are not those of 10 years ago: the oldest system is dated 2014, the newest 2018. Lombardi was chosen because it offered the best quality-performance-price ratio, and in fact also for finishing etic.a chose Digistar, equipped with Bravo, a flat screen printing unit, and Toro module for hot foil and embossing: therefore high performance for many finishing options.
Recent investments are part of a growth project in the sector of finished labels that etic.a intends to pursue vigorously in the coming years. In this regard, a three-year development plan has been prepared that foresees the enrichment of the company both in terms of technologies and skills, that is, people. Of course, this focus on ennobled products does not mean that etic.a will abandon the production of labels with less post-print processing, also because this would not be ethical!
Sustainability
Roberta Quero, marketing and communication manager, explains to us what etic.a wants to do in this area. “Acting concretely towards sustainability is very important especially for a company called etic.a: we have already identified a path and we are putting in place projects with our suppliers, which we will then share with our customers, this because we would like sustainability became our business card. We want to manage the recovery and recycling of our material, making the most of every material present in our company. We want to reduce waste, which in any case will become a resource, and this will be an added value for suppliers and customers”. The trend towards organic and sustainable products is a reality and even brands want to offer products with a sustainable supply chain in all its components. “Growth in this sense is very strong and we are gearing up to meet these needs and currently we are looking for the most suitable partners among raw materials manufacturers: within this year the project will become a reality”, concludes Roberta.
Transform data into information and information into knowledge
etic.a considered appropriate to have a central figure for its development project: Luca Incagnoli, is the management engineer in charge of management control, that is the one who interprets and evaluates the data related to the orders.
Luca explains that “the strong competitiveness of our sector makes it necessary to set up a cost control system to achieve sustainable profitability targets in relation to investments; for this reason I am working to modify the management system already in use to make easily accessible all the data needed to identify where the costs have a greater impact”. All this is not enough because Luca, with the help of other colleagues and external consultants, is building an extraction and setting system above the management system, “so that the archived data become useful for the company decision-making process, consequently these structured data can allow an analysis of the current company performance and predict the future one; the results of these analyzes can be used to build development decisions”. In one word etic.a is providing itself with a significant Business Intelligence application.
