Caccioppoli 1920

One of the highlights of travelling to Italy is visiting our great network of suppliers and rekindling relationships and friendships built up over the past 20 years.

This trip I was fortunate enough to squeeze in an afternoon visit to Naples where I met with cloth merchants Caccioppoli. My host, Cosimo is the fourth generation to work in this family owned business that was started in 1920 by Vincenzo Caccioppoli.

Vincenzo along with his two eldest sons Raffaele and Salvatore decided to emigrate from Naples, Italy to Bogotá in Colombia. There they started the business of importing textiles from Biella, Italy and New York. At the end of the First World War, the family returned to Naples and opened their business in Piazza Nicola Amore. The business is still based here.

96 years of history are obvious at every turn in this wonderful building. Cosimo showed me where he had worked as a small boy after school helping uncles, brothers, fathers and grandfathers to cut swatches and deliver packages.

Today Cosimo works as a buyer creating exclusive designs for the company and explains that over time the business has expanded to fill every room and space of the building which today houses over 20 employees and ships hundreds of cut length orders daily all over the world.

The business works at its own pace and is typically Italian. Many of the manual processes remain unchanged. They have recently undergone some modernisation with a new website and the installation of state of the art servers. They seem well placed to celebrate their centenary and embrace the future with outstanding contemporary collections and a modern perspective blended with a respect for tradition and their own vibrant history.

MC