“We know that this may seem like yet another anomaly for a district such as Prato, but we like anomalies”. Giovanni Santi also explains in this way the sale of 51% of Beste’s shares to Holding Industriale (Hild) made official today.

Hind’s subsidiary, Holding Moda, thus has a majority share in the Prato-based company: an operation that has taken place over the past six months and brings Beste into the Hind universe, made up of 13 subsidiaries with a total of 1,500 employees.

“Of the concept of cession there is only the technicality – said CEO Matteo Santi to nip in the bud the fears that, especially in Prato, this term causes – because the Santi family remains at the helm. We made this choice to give further impetus to the company and the ambitious industrial plan that we shared with Holding Moda’.

Hind, represented by its top management, president and founder Claudio Rovere and Holding Moda’s managing director Giulio Guasco, arrives in Prato after having built an almost complete textile network: “With Beste,” explained Rovere, “we complete our offer to the top end market. The textile production part was missing, and in Beste we find complete integration with the upstream part of the chain’.

Matteo Santi summarised the three reasons for the sale: ‘We are entering an Italian group of excellence, we are opening up to commercial and industrial synergies with the other companies in the holding company, and we are launching a long-term industrial strategy that will ensure solidity and support for growth’.

It was precisely the issue of industrial strategy that was stressed several times, underlining the fact that this is an agreement between entrepreneurs and not the incorporation into a financial company: ‘It is a project of people,’ Guasco explained, ‘who want to work together for a long time. We are not a fund, otherwise we would not have created a school or built factories, things that do not give an immediate return’.

With this agreement we also want to be the leader in Prato of a series of further innovations

Acquire in order not to remain small. This is the indication given by Giovanni Santi: ‘I am known in Prato for two things, being a Juventus fan and loving acquisitions. My Prato colleagues know that my thoughts are on not remaining small, because now the first-tier market is very selective and it is necessary to be structured. The transactions with Texco and Tessitura Serena go in this direction, and other acquisitions will come soon, because with this agreement we also want to be the leader in Prato of a series of further innovations. We would never have sold to investors; perhaps it would have been profitable for me and my family but short-sighted in business terms’.

A choice that evidently also pleased the 255 employees: a delegation met with the Santi brothers, Guasco and Rovere, and at the end of the brief meeting a loud applause broke out.

In the photo, from left, Giovanni Santi, Guasco, Rovere and Matteo Santi.