Growing while remaining consistent, the Macron story

At the new Macron headquarters in Crespellano, in the industrial area just outside the historic city of Bologna, there are still empty desks and ergonomic chairs covered in cellophane. But given the expansion plans of the Bologna-based company, it is only a matter of time before these too are used. In fact, growth has been unstoppable in recent years. The number of clubs supplied has expanded dramatically and the level of jerseys produced has steadily increased, so that at some point it was inevitable to find a new home to accommodate the ever-growing number of employees. Founded in 1971, in the last twenty years Macron has grown from a local team sponsor to one of the largest suppliers of kits for football, rugby, basketball and padel. A story that shows that Italian style, attention to detail and tailoring to the customer are fundamental qualities also in the sportswear scene, reinforced by the osmosis between sport and fashion that we are currently experiencing.

Macron's rise is therefore based on a solid foundation, on the anticipation of many innovations that would later become common, and on an increasingly important role among brands of international stature. Amedeo Iossa, Head of Style and Design at the Bologna-based company and historical memory of all the jerseys produced in the last two decades, tells us how the company has changed, and with it the world of football in Italy and around the world. "I have always been a lover of sport, of the football I played, but above all I have always been passionate about fashion. And that's how I joined Macron as a communications officer in 2004, when we were just starting out and had already been sponsoring Bologna for two seasons, so I saw the company grow from the inside."

But above all, Iossa was instrumental in securing the path that Macron took at the very beginning of its history, the path that is closely linked to fashion. "I adored Bikkembergs, who always went the opposite way, he was one of the first to bring football into fashion collections and onto the catwalks. Even his first collections were heavily influenced by football, and I have been a user and fan of Bikkembergs from the beginning, I have gone the opposite way by putting some elements on the game shirts." No easy task at the beginning, when the focus was entirely on the performance aspect and the supply of teamwear, which is still the core business of the company today.

"The crowning glory was working with Napoli when camouflage was in fashion at the time and we - in this case I worked with Luigi De Laurentiis - wanted to bring it to the pitches." Napoli and De Laurentiis were indeed among the first in Serie A to bet on the fledgling company, and they, along with Bologna, immediately became the leading team. "Our luck was that Napoli had an important sounding board at that time, by the way, if I remember correctly, the debut of this jersey took place in London at Arsenal, so on a very important stage. But that year there was the first and resounding situation where out of eleven players, fashion was on the pitch, at least as far as we were concerned."

And the story of this jersey serves as an example of the Macron philosophy, which has succeeded in anticipating fashions on and off the pitch by constantly studying trends and picking up on new things before they become public knowledge. The extraordinary success of this jersey for the Azzurri - "it was one of the best-selling away jerseys of all time, usually it's the home jersey, in this case the away jersey doubled sales" - has shown that courage often pays off in the end, but knowing the target market is fundamental to the success of a project. Iossa is adamant that keeping up to date with the cultural and artistic environment of football is central to his work. "Over the years we have also collaborated with other designers, even lesser known ones from the world of sportswear. Every time they came to our office, they were surprised at how much work goes into making a football jersey."

And designer Macron himself is a regular in Italian fashion circles, where the name of the Bologna-based company has also become synonymous with Italian style. "Every year I go to Pitti to research new trends for jerseys. As Head of Style and Design, I was introduced at a stand and the first thing a designer who knew nothing about football asked me was if we had done the camouflage jersey. This also got us into some areas where even people who did not follow football and were more interested in fashion recognised us. This experience gave us a lot of notoriety". Even today, the camouflage jersey and the denim jersey of the following season are fundamental chapters in the history of the relationship between football and fashion. A history that today makes transgression and hybridisation possible. "If we were to chase a fashion trend today without having a past, we would be doing an exercise that would take time to work. On the other hand, we are credible because we have this history in our DNA and we have to continue on this path."

After more than twenty years in the field, Macron has established itself as one of the Italian excellences in this field, through a path that includes the development of relationships and a comprehensive customer service. "The first phase is always one of listening, I always say we listen, we observe, we introduce ourselves and then we design. We listen to the club's feedback, especially at the beginning of a relationship when we do not yet know the dynamics and characteristics of each club." And this willingness during the discussion phase is then reinforced during the creation and design of a jersey, when each element of the jersey can be adapted to the needs of the players and the club. It is the total customisation of each Macron jersey that attracts both top clubs and lesser-known clubs, who take comfort in the fact that they find total availability on the other side. "We are Italian and the Italian style is part of our way of working, our kind of product. In any case, we try to bring the Italian touch to everything we do, from technical and technological research on fabrics and cuts to historical research to better understand if there are critical points that need to be addressed."

The sartorial approach is one of Macron's strengths. Macron works with athletes to investigate how to make jerseys more efficient and comfortable. "Over the years, we have always had discussions with the players about the technical side. Each time, we ask the clubs to be a little more attentive to the style aspect, because it's not easy to give feedback to someone who is not an insider, so we get immediate feedback on what we are doing," Iossa reiterates. He explains that each sport has its own rules and needs and that the designer's and planner's job is to find a unique response to a set of requirements. "For example, when we got into rugby, we designed the kits together with the players, as in the case of the Scottish national team, for whom we almost customised the kits. We realised that each player has a different role and a different physicality, and we have to dress them all in the same jersey, taking into account their needs".

Macron only entered the world of rugby relatively recently, but in just a few years has managed to become one of the world's leading kit suppliers for professional and grassroots clubs, proving that it can learn the tricks of the trade quickly. "There always has to be contamination, like contamination between different sports. What we learn one year making a jogging jersey, we can use the next year for a rugby jersey, and so on. I always like to get into a new sport, like I did recently with padel, because it allows me to get into particular fabrics. Since no one invents anything these days, it's a good trick to put an idea aside, bring it in and adapt it to the needs in a new context." Such know-how, in turn, is indispensable today for those who want to make garments originally designed for sport usable for everyday life, a situation Macron knows well because "the jersey the players wear is exactly what the fans buy, we do not have replica jerseys."

It's a culture of football jerseys that Macron has helped to create, paying attention to every detail, from the backneck to the choice of materials, and modulating his own aesthetic without constantly resorting to templates or set designs. Amedeo Iossa, who has witnessed how the role of football shirts has changed in this millennium, is aware of the importance they have acquired recently and how, even in Italy, they have reached a status that used to be exclusive to the Anglo-Saxon world. "Years ago, it was difficult to see anyone wearing a football jersey in Italy, as it was in England, where the jersey was not only compulsory in the stadium, but was often worn in other contexts as well." Iossa attributes this change in mentality to fashion, which has made the aesthetics of football less sectoralised and thus more comprehensible to an audience not used to stadium cheering.

"I think these fashion collaborations help Italy take the jerseys beyond football," a practise Macron has also used in recent seasons, first with Cagliari and Antonio Marras and this year with Bologna and Elisabetta Franchi. And Bologna keeps coming back to Macron's history, which has been woven like a thread for over twenty years and on whose relationship the company has built its success. Clear proof of this is this gigantic new complex, which embodies the dreams and perspectives of one of the strongest realities of the Italian scene and beyond.