Word: benelli
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...fate of Benelli doesn't fit neatly into conventional accounts of Italy vs. China. For starters, the motomaker had already suffered the consequences of a very different era of Asian competition. In the 1970s, it took a hit from top-performing Japanese bikes. What was once a company of 1,000 employees largely responsible for Pesaro's post-1945 growth had halted new production twice in the past two decades. By 1995, it had laid off all but the shell of a staff; those who were left merely produced replacement parts for existing bikes. Mauro Righi, who has worked...
...found if the 94-year-old company was to survive. With no Italian bidders, offers came from Russia and Britain, though they were focused merely on acquiring the brand. Qianjiang, instead, which turns out 1.2 million scooters a year in China, saw value in buying - and relaunching - Benelli's design and production. That would give them a foothold in the European market, and the move had an industrial logic: unlike Japan three decades earlier, China still lags well behind the Western motor industry in know-how and design, which means the Chinese saw the small Italian firm as a vehicle...
...Qianjiang's first moves was to give Benelli's technical director, Pierluigi Marconi, the same title for the Chinese company, too. Though he confesses that he'd "never even eaten an egg roll" before meeting his new employers, Marconi is now in constant contact with his Chinese counterparts, and often visits headquarters in the southeast China city of Wenling. "They understand that we have the history in this sector," he says, "which is not something you can just buy or invent from scratch...
...main responsibility for Yan "Klara" Haimei, Qianjiang's chief in Pesaro, is to watch Benelli's balance sheet, leaving design and production in the hands of the Italians. Both the Chinese and Italian managers emphasize that the aim is to boost the Italian brand while improving the performance of the smaller and simpler Chinese scooters. It's a question of knowing your markets. The 500cc motorcycles popular with European and American riders are not even permitted on Chinese roads. Says Marconi: "In China they've produced the same scooter for the past 20 years." Marconi says the equation...
Downstairs on the shop floor, where 18 motorcycles are produced a day, there is not a single visible sign that Benelli is Chinese-owned. With his handlebar moustache and thick sideburns, veteran worker Righi believes Qianjiang has brought a real change for the better. "We've seen more investment and new projects in the past 18 months than we'd seen in the past decade," he says. On the local level, this might be the most meaningful effect of the Benelli-Qianjiang model: the hundred or so Italian employees at the plant see the Chinese parent as the savior...