Ilaria Spadacenta loves fashion, trends, colors. Her gaze, while I grab the words to fix them on paper, runs forward, even when she talks about the past, how she got to know the world of leather processing and her greatest intuition: creating a brand.
Italian Leather Company was born in 2015 from the pure passion of Ilaria Spadacenta, from her ability to spread her energy, her competence and, more importantly, the transparency of her work commitment in the leather goods sector.
What led you - I ask - to put your face in it?
Let's start with what happened before ILC, to put things in order - suggests Ilaria Spadacenta. I have not always been an entrepreneur, on the contrary I decided to venture down this path with Italian Leather Company, before I was in a completely different sector, the insurance and financial branches.
I lived in Florence and the English company I worked for asked me to move to Milan and I instinctively thought: I will never go to Milan! So I decided to change everything to stay in Florence, a city that I adored and continue to love.
So I started working in a buying office in the fashion industry and, after a while, I was contacted for the commercial sector of a company in Campania, where I was born, a tannery with more than 60 years of history.
So I catched the opportunity: the fashion industry fascinated me and the new job gave me, again, the possibility to travel. I started quietly, but I immediately realized that, thanks to travel and new reactions, from the Philippines to Russia to Sweden, I could get in touch with customers from all over the world and open up to new cultures.
This period really formed me and my resourcefulness was noticed by the boss who pushed me to expose myself more and more: I was becoming the image of the company. The difficulties began when the management of the company, at times too bold, risked being attributed to me.
From here I understood that for me, the most important thing was to answer customers truthfully, so I went away by strengthening the idea and the need to create something that was in line with my way of being and acting.
How did you choose the company's name?
Italian Leather Company was born out of nothing. The first meetings were held in three at my house, the first warehouse was my car, but I understood that the strength of this new company would have been precisely to offer a transparent message. And the name clearly represents this message and our corporate spirit: Italian, because Made in Italy is very important in our sector, Leather because we treat leathers and Company to represent the team.
The achievements happened quickly, thanks to the relationships I had built over the years with customers. Because the kind of customer who works with us is not the one who seeks only a good price: in fact, there is more among our leathers. There is service, there is kindness, there is availability, there is a sincere way of doing things. We do make mistakes, like everyone else. And mistakes, in our craftsmanship are impossible to avoid. What matters to me is managing mistakes with the customer, and fixing them properly.
Transparency is a value with respect to the customer. And my battle still today is this: the company must reflect me. Our goal is to put ourselves alongside the customer and not only to create what he is looking for. We want to help him, to give him advice. And direct him towards the best choice by developing tailor-made products that correspond to his real needs.
The other important concept in the relationship with the customer is that we treat everyone in the same way, whether large or small. This is our philosophy. A customer in the USA recently told me: “you're not a supplier for us, you're a partner”.