Memories of Stoke-on-Trent people - Ken Green

Ken Green

A Life in the Ceramic Tile Industry 
section 11

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Visit to Italy in March 1959.

Geoff Corn (chairman), his cousin Brabazon Ellis (production director) and Lawrence Bullin planned to visit several of Italy’s leading tile plants.  I replaced my injured boss.  It was a most revealing trip.  

I was taken aback!  We were not just looking at improvements to be learned from the individual factories we visited; we were viewing an industry that had moved on and left the UK tile industry behind.  Many manufacturers in UK remained unaware of what was happening.  Some did not want to know and sheltered behind comments such as: “their decorated tiles are too fancy to catch on” or “their body compositions are not suitable for wall tiles”.  UK factories were still getting orders and making profits.  Such easy business resulted in complacency, but it was not to last for much longer.

The reasons for the Italians’ newly gained leadership of the ceramic tile industry were many and varied.  A good survey of the reasons, for those interested, is to be found in The Competitive Advantage of Nations by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School.  Further to the reasons he gives I would add the following;

In countries such as UK, Germany, France and USA the tile manufacturing know-how was to be found within the tile manufacturing companies.  UK suppliers of body materials and glaze materials made products, which were as good and consistent as from anywhere else in the world.  

But, suppliers did not tell their customers how to use their products.  That would be tantamount to teaching one’s grandmother how to suck eggs.  The situation in Italy developed quite differently.  Glaze supply companies offered to commission their products at a customer’s factory.  That was, of course, particularly helpful to a new company and there were many of those.  Equipment suppliers such as SACMI, SITI and Welko Industriale began to offer turnkey factories.  As the years went by and technology changed, finding a good glaze supplier and a good equipment supplier made setting up a tile plant by the uninitiated much easier than it had been in the past.  

A critical mass of tile manufacture developed in Italy, especially in the Modena-Sassuola-Bologna-Imola region.  It had not reached this stage of development in 1959 but it was on the way.  

In the mid ‘80s I asked an executive of one of Germany’s leading glaze companies about their purchase of an Italian glaze company situated in the heartland of Italian tile manufacture.  He replied by saying that it had enabled their technical people to learn more from a few months gossip in the local bars and restaurants than by years of research in their home laboratories.  The same feelings were echoed by a UK company.  When I read of happenings more than one hundred years ago, in what is now Stoke-on-Trent, I get an impression of the same dynamism.

The visit to Italy in 1959 took place at a rather more leisurely pace than I was used to.  We detoured to visit Milan, Livorno, Florence, Assisi, Ancona and several other places.  Geoff Corn was a knowledgeable and interesting man.  He was a delightful traveling companion and the best tour guide one could have.  He did not usually handle money and I dealt with such mundane things as travelers’ cheques, cash and payment of bills.  Every now and again he would ask for “a little pocket money if funds will allow”.  

We all regretted our lack of Italian, but Geoff Corn was not to be outdone.  Whilst in the monastery in Assisi, he started a conversation in Latin with a monk, clad in brown cloak and sandals.  They conversed in the ancient tongue for a few minutes.  The monk then began to gently correct Geoff’s Latin in an upper class English accent.  Perhaps the tile industry breeds mild eccentrics.  

I was much impressed by the Marazzi factories; which were the best I had ever seen.  The Madonna was much in evidence around the factories.  Signor Marazzi invariably made the sign of the cross before starting his car.  When I emptied my jacket pocket that evening I found a small Madonna had been put there.  The 1959 visit to Italy was immensely enjoyable; but it knocked all complacency out of me.

previous: events of 1959
next: AG3 Biscuit Unit