Cangioli

Italian wool company. Its headquarters are in Prato, near Florence. It was established by Vincenzo Cangioli in 1859: a workshop “to fill the warp” which, eleven years later, would be enlarged by the acquisition of a plant in Vaiano furnished with machines operated by self-produced hydroelectric power. In 1881, the company adopted a kind of law that was strange and unusual for the time. It was the Worker’s Document and it set down the workers’ duties, and, also, though in a limited way, their rights, as, for example, their right to give notice and resign. Toward the end of the century, the inheritor of the company, Alceste, decided to build the plant in Prato. Strong export activity, especially to England, allowed the firm to expand its production to include clothing, with a network of shops, and in 1930 to add blankets. In 1938 a new spinning, dyeing and weaving mill was opened. In 1958, Vincenzo II, named after his grandfather, the founder, was succeeded by his sons Carlo, Gherardo, and Sergio. At the end of the 1970s they decided to make investments in the fabric division which they supported with large imports of alpaca. In 1987 the family business was joined by Gherardo’s children, Sabina and Vincenzo. In 1992 further massive investments started a technological modernization process that was followed by a strong increase in the number of products offered. The group consists of six companies: women’s fabrics, men’s drapery, spinning, industrial weaving, dyeing, and refinishing. It employs 200 workers. The group sells in Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, England, Spain, Japan, and the U.S. When, during World War II, there was fighting in Tuscany, an artillery shell destroyed a chimney of Lanificio Cangioli, but left the rest of the building intact. The image of that chimney became at that time the symbol of Prato.