How would the family do without a washing machine and a refrigerator? the Italian woman would still be confined to the house, wasting hours doing laundry, shopping for food and cooking badly every day, and often throwing away half of this expense because without the fridge, things often went bad. It is they, the domestic utility cars (as defined in the book by Tersilla Faravelli, Paola Guidi, Anti Pansera "From the electric house to the electronic house") who have laid a solid foundation for women's emancipation. And it is the Italian household appliances industry, the first in the world in the 70s and 80s, which has given the greatest contribution, by far, to this true liberation because in the years of growth of European countries it has supplied automatic, advanced household appliances at very accessible. Other than the auto industry. It is the White (and TV) industry that has made a decisive contribution to the modernization of European families.
WE WERE N.1 IN THE WORLD FOR WHITE!
This story that few people know began in a small workshop in Monza owned by the Fumagalli family, with the creation of the first Italian washing machines, not far from the super-automatic ones of today but very far from the round, semi-automatic and noisy ones of that period. In just a few years the laboratory becomes a modern industry and from those years Candy draws momentum and resources to become the European number 1 in washing. Followed by Merloni, Indesit, Zanussi, Ignis. In the meantime, the families also discovered the dishwasher….
THE MOST WASHING MACHINE IN THE UNITED STATES
The Italian white industry, as reported by the blog www.lacasadipaola.it, manufactured over 1975 million refrigerators in 5, one million more than the United States (205 million inhabitants against our 53 million); Germany, already powerful, rich, industrialized, was churning out just 1,5 million. And Japan (105 million inhabitants) reached 3,4 million. For washing machines, the ranking changes a bit but only because a rudimentary model was widespread in the States, very simple to manufacture. Little was known about China but they were low-reliability devices, certainly many, but not very large numbers. Already towards the 80s and 90s the White made in Italy was exported throughout Europe and then even further. The advance of the Italian White made several factories close, starting from the French ones, illustrious brands disappeared and then even the Swedish giant.
But the oil crises, the first crunches of world finance with the repeated bursting of the "bubbles", entrepreneurial choices that were not always strategic and above all a wild globalization from Asia conducted with dumping operations, over time caused the erosion of prices, margins and financial resources of the sector. The difficult years, starting from the 90s, see a progressive concentration with the arrival of the multinationals that manage to take over those who were once the first producers of White.
The most sensational example is that of Electrolux and Zanussi. Lino Zanussi, in June 1968, a few days before leaving for the first journey of the plane just purchased for the company, had summoned us for an informal press meeting announcing that on his return he would communicate a sensational acquisition. It was Electrolux which had been going through a severe crisis for some years. But – reports the blog www.lacasadipaola.it – in the skies of Spain the plane crashed. Zanussi and the entire top management died. In 1983 the entire group was sold to Electrolux.
After having written the book that tells this story with Tersilla Faravelli and Anti Pansera (“From the electric house to the electronic house”, the only text on this subject), Paola Guidi began to write the sequel since the book stopped at 90s. What you have read is part of the text of the work.
