Everything has begun last July, when the company property of that time decided to relocate the business in Armenia, where the company would have opened a new firm.
Facing the fact of losing our job, we could have taken two ways: the first, the easiest one was turning over evidence, accepting the unemployment and all the obstacles in searching a new job; the other way, the most difficult and steepest, was trying the impossible: bet on ourselves, on our skills and acquire the company.
Ready to restart, we have decided to found a cooperative, using worker buyout tools. Our choice has been brave and very accurate: we have renounced unemployment, severance pay and we have invested 180.000 euros in order to buy new machinery.
And that’s how the miracle has happened. Our life has changed in a few months, so has done our future that initially seemed bleak and uncertain.
In a short time, we have managed to reconquer our old clients, of which the 90% in the US. We have managed to carry on the production and to restart speedily, working 14 hours a day.
We have won our challenge: in which enthusiasm was stronger than desperation.
Our eleven partners say: “We work more and there are a lot of worries, but this company is ours, we love it, it is part of us. We are a family of , workers, entrepreneurs.”
Our company is situated in Altotevere, one of the economically strongest areas of Umbria, where in the recent past even other firms were able to restart, and this helped us answering to the ones that has decided to take away another piece of economy from the tired territory of the Centre of Italy.
Nothing would have been possible without the great help of Lega Coop Umbria to who we send our sincere thanks, in particular to Andrea Bernadoni, Head of the economic office that has followed us during the start-up phase and the next development of the cooperative.
“We are here. And now more than ever we want to stay.”
