Belfe, an Eyewear License in the Near Future

The future also includes eyewear for Belfe, the brand of the Marostica group owned by the Festa family. As the brand's managing director, Thierry Andretta, explained "We are negotiating an eyewear license together with those for shoes, children's clothes and bags. We want to develop the same categories for Post Card (the other brand owned by the group, ed.), but as it is at the top end of the luxury brands, we'll be doing it ourselves'.

The aim is to develop the Belfe brand, especially for exports: today the brand's turnover from sales abroad is only 25% of the total and they want to bring it up to 50%.

The main markets in which the company intends to operate are the US, which is showing some signs of a recovery, Europe and the East "where the license for the Belfe brand expires at the end of the year". "There", Andretta went on, "we'll enter into a joint venture with a local distributor who will import the product from Italy".

On the distribution front, the group is considering a program that will start in 2004 and envisages a series of openings for Belfe and Post Card in European capitals. Paris will come first and then in September it will be the turn of Milan, with the renovation of the area in via San Pietro all'Orto. 'We'll be presenting a new architectural concept', Andretta concluded, 'created by Milan's Vudafieri studio, and we'll put our two brands together. It will be our pilot store for the development of franchising'.