Interview with Mr Antonio Staffoni

1981, incorporation of Santex AG in Tobel, Switzerland

1984-1990, Santex AG grows steadily, doubling its turnover every year.

1996, Santex AG acquires Caratsch AG (machines for composites and lamination) and Villars AG (coating and laminating machines), merging them into the newly incorporated Cavitec AG of Muenchwilen, Switzerland. Creation of the Santex Group of Companies.

2001, Santex AG merges with Sperotto Rimar srl, Italy.

2005, Santex opens its sales and manufacturing facility in Qing Pu, Shanghai, China.

The world textile machinery market is huge and covers a great variety of segments, from bale opening to finishing and from nonwoven processing to synthetic extrusion.

The “Textile machinery division” of Santex Group, which groups machines sold under the brands Santex and Sperotto Rimar, acts only in a very small slice of it, which we can generally refer to as “dry finishing”.

There are no independent marketing figures available for this sector. We estimate to hold approximately 30-40% in turnover value of the dry finishing machines for knits, where we are considered the market leader.

I must first of all mention that I come from Sperotto Rimar, and therefore I joined Santex relatively late, when its booming years were stabilising. I could see those booming years as a competitor (Santex and Sperotto Rimar were competing fiercely before the merger) and I often wondered how they could do this.

Having been for 7 years in Santex now, I think this company succeeded mainly because of 3 factors:

1) it focused on a particular technology segment (machines for knits processing) and put all its efforts into that only, in a moment when other companies, may be more technical- than market-driven, gave in to the temptation to do “a little of everything”

2) it introduced the concept of “full dry finishing” by selling not just one machine but a set of machines and the textile know-how to use them to achieve the best world standards

3) it always put customers on top. Not just in words: we really do it. One instance: most companies at that time did not (and some still do not) pay enough care to customer’s complaints on small fix-ups after erection and commissioning. Santex always took pains to achieve the maximum customer satisfaction, without looking much at the side of “was this included? Who should pay for this extra?”.

I think we can summarize that approach with the sentence “solve the problem first, discuss later”.

I can only assess what is under everybody’s eyes: today’s textile industry is going through a horrible moment.

First increasing oil and energy prices, then credit market crisis have triggered a plunge in consumers’ spending in the USA and EU, which are still THE driving consumer markets for the world. This has badly affected the textile mills, which constitute our customer basis.

In 2008 more than ever, textile mills are confronted worldwide with reduced size of orders, higher price pressure, increasing energy and labour costs and minimal possibility to avail of bank credit.

I could hardly figure out a less attractive scenario for a textile mill to invest in capital equipment.

Switzerland is a great country to run a medium-sized enterprise like Santex.

It offers a fine network of highly qualified suppliers, superb infrastructures, the greatest flexibility in Europe and reasonable taxation.

Switzerland also enjoys what is possibly the lowest unemployment rate in Europe (~2%) and any company there is challenged to groom and win the loyalty of its human resources.

In that effort, Santex has the advantage of being small. The company was always managed with a direct, open style. Ultimately companies are made of people who face hundreds of problems. In my opinion, a great company is a place where people trust each other to do their utmost to solve these problems every day and share a feeling of responsibility towards the customer.

We try every day to make Santex a little more that way.

Having realized that there was no alternative to the textile market movement eastwards, Santex decided to follow the natural flow of things and opened its sales & manufacturing facility in Shanghai in 2005.

1. keep the investment to a reasonably small size: we focused on all and only those activities that were needed to ensure quality. No luxuries, no bragging – we stuck to the core. In our facility in China we do our own painting, assembling and testing – but we rely on suppliers for the manufacture of parts. We still ensure quality by working on the vendor development side and by using our service department to complete the job and feed the information back to the unit, for continuous improvement.

2. make it a Santex machine. Only machines up to the name of Santex come out of our factories, wherever these may be.

3. 100% direct investment. Although they can help starting up, local partners may make it more difficult to stick to our principles.

4. trust the people. Aside of the necessary visits to transfer know-how and monitor processes, no expatriates work in our Shanghai unit. Expats are expensive and need to be replaced often. If one decides to make an investment in a foreign country, he’d better start trusting the local people and build the company with them.

The result of all this is a company which is recognized to be Santex – save for the facts that its products are once again affordable and that its people can speak Chinese in China!

The map of textile investment changes fairly quickly over the years, but certainly some countries can be expected to have always a great potential. These are, besides China: Turkey, the last large textile producer in Europe; India, rich in good quality cotton and in know-how; and Indonesia. Besides exporting, all these countries have a growing captive textile consumption.

Were it not for our technical textile division, Santex would not be in such a good health today. Fortunately for us, the collapse of investment in the traditional textile world has been counterbalanced by a boom in the composite industry.

Cavitec is the established market leader in machines for processing composites, used in hi-tech sectors such as wind energy and aerospace, and these projects have allowed us to sail through very troubled business waters lately.

Sure it does. However, it is very hard for any company nowadays to be truly innovative. True R&D requires long term investments and has usually a low success ratio. You need to embark on many projects before ending up with a successful product.

Most companies, even among big names, cannot afford such expenses these times. So we witness curious phenomena, such as old (or even crazy) ideas recycled and re-packaged to be sold as “innovation”.

We at Santex are blessed to benefit of the good momentum of technical textiles, which allows us to carry out real R&D projects.

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