Fashion, a liquidity crisis takes Pinko to court

The hearing before the Court of Parma is scheduled for 14 November. The judge will have to decide whether to ratify the petition for the application of asset protection measures, a procedure envisaged by the business crisis and insolvency code, which replaced the old bankruptcy law. Only with the ratification of Cris Conf will the clothing company from Fidenza, near Parma, which launched the Pinko brand internationally in the mid-1980s, be able to start negotiations with creditors to try to get out of the liquidity crisis in which it finds itself. A crisis that is shaking the world of made-in-Italy fashion. 'But in this way,' explains Sido Bonfatti, the expert appointed by a special commission of the Bologna Chamber of Commerce, 'the company has protected itself by putting creditors on an equal footing. It will have twelve months to reach an agreement'. If the Court of Parma gives the go-ahead, Bonfatti, a lawyer and professor of bankruptcy law at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, will play the role of advisor, mediator between the parties. Only an agreement will allow the company to avert worse scenarios, from a drastic recovery plan to a composition with creditors. An arrangement that, unlike the chosen procedure, would subject it to constraints and controls.

The petition filed, in fact, not only precludes creditors from filing for bankruptcy but also guarantees the company independence in management and administration. A thunderbolt for the trade unions. Through the association of industrialists of Parma, they asked for an urgent meeting with the company. Cris Conf, which did not want to comment on the use of the procedure to try to get out of the crisis, has over 550 employees. 'The whole fashion system is in crisis,' says Davide Doninotti, provincial secretary of Filctem-Cgil in Parma, 'but we are talking about a company that has never applied for redundancy. We had already called an assembly for early November, for other reasons. Now we have to understand what the real situation is. The concern also concerns the supply chain: when such an important brand goes into crisis there are inevitable repercussions, with a domino effect'. The company has a network of 250 stores. These include 95 directly operated shops in China, which are being severely affected by the slump in consumption in the Asian giant.

A contraction that is at the root of the crisis. Cris Conf was founded in 1985 by Pietro Negra, the current chairman of the board, and his wife Cristina Rubini, as a producer of several fashion brands. Then came the launch of the Pinko brand, which initially focused on ready-to-wear fashion. This was until the turn towards women's ready-to-wear. But it was in the early 2000s that an international expansion plan was launched, with distribution also abroad through a network of direct and franchised shops. These were the years in which the brand's presence was counted in 800 multi-brand stores and 70 single-brand boutiques, with vertiginous growth. Phases of crisis, however, Pinko has already gone through them. Like when - ten years ago - it announced a company restructuring plan with the cutting of over 40 jobs. The last available balance sheet is from 2002: over 220 million.