our history

The Artisan Company Orietta Barzaghi was established with four collaborators in 1983, at a time when the considerable expansion of the Como textile sector required the most important companies to use manpower for the production of textile accessories (foulards, scarves, stoles, etc.). The Barzaghi workshop supplied one of the most important listed companies for about fifteen years, meaning that, in order to meet the needs of a constantly growing market, the workshop needed to collaborate with increasingly structured and efficient realities. The increase in work and expanding market conditions allowed Orietta Barzaghi to increase the number of employees to seven. 

In 1998, during a period of initial and continuing market contraction, given my experience in the Logistics aspects of the sector, Orietta invited me to join the company. I pointed out that her concentration on basic manufactured goods exposed her business to a large number of competitors and as a result would face an extremely uncertain future. I envisaged a radical change in strategy: investment in professional training of employees, state-of-the-art equipment and a building that could grow with the company. We needed to present ourselves on the market in such a professional way as to guarantee a proactive approach, with the ambition of continuously improving our skills, also employing collaborators from different sectors in the textile manufacturing business. The new company policy favoured constant and continuous growth even within a negative context. In 2012 we increased the number of team members to twenty and enlarged our customer base, whose confidence in us motivated the creation of a new reality, Clori & C.

The new company had two main objectives: maintaining the flexibility typical of artisan realities and giving a more sharply-defined role to my son Andrea who, in the meantime, had entered our sector with enthusiasm, bringing his skills to a world in constant search of professionalism and knowledge. Today, the Orietta Barzaghi company oversees quality control, a task that it performs exclusively for Clori & C, which manages the rest of the production process while maintaining customer relations.

In 2015, having taken note of the constant increase in the demand for manual work and objective difficulties in both finding labour and maintaining competitive costs, Artisan Corner was established in Tunisia, in collaboration with a local entrepreneur. It represents an independent structure specializing exclusively in manual processes (hand hemming, fraying, patch stitching, knotted fringes and various other decorations). Artisan Corner shares the values of the Italian company (Clori & C) and works with determination and commitment to meet our own and our customers' expectations. Currently, there are one hundred artisans working in Tunisia, with thirteen and fifteen employees in Orietta Barzaghi and Clori & C. respectively.

Throughout our history, we have not only focused on the development of our business, but have also worked towards achieving environmental sustainability, having invested in "Green" solutions since 2013 with a 30KW photovoltaic system. This year we have installed a heat pump, refurbished the air conditioning with an electrostatic filter system and implemented a system to regulate humidity levels by distributing heat and cool air through micro-perforated aluminium tubes.

Next year we are planning to install two EV charging points with the capacity to power a maximum of four vehicles. We also intend to purchase an electric van and car to as a continuation of our sustainable development and, at the same time, offer customers a free charging service, all using power supplied by the photovoltaic system.