Company Profile Moose Brand Profile
The Italian job Publisher John Baulch visits the headquarters of Clementoni as it celebrates its 60th anniversary to see what makes the company such an enduring success story. Pierpaolo Clementoni
Giovani Clementoni
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the San Remo Music Festival, after which the company moved on to developing a range of games based on TV shows. One of the company’s earliest success stories was Sapientino, the game based on ‘two pins’ which was launched in 1967 and is still in the range today.
Travelling to the company’s long-term base in the Recanati also gave me the chance to spend time with Clementoni’s leadership team, a healthy blend of experience and new blood which has steered the company to its current position as the fourth-largest company in the Italian market. Headed up by CEO Giovani Clementoni, the company’s experienced management of MD Guido Vingiani, who has been with the company for 26 years, and export sales director Flavia Verducci, who has spent 21 years in the export division, are ably supported by more recent additions in the form of product marketing director Alessandro Roberti and chief marketing and R&D officer Guido Sciascia. Their collective passion for the business is evident, as is the enthusiasm of all of its staff across the R&D, manufacturing and sales departments which are based at head office.
Since those early days, the company has branched out considerably and is now a leading player in a variety of categories. Throughout its distinguished history, there have been a series of fundamental elements to the company’s DNA, including the ‘learning through play’ philosophy which underpins everything it does. After initially focusing on the domestic market, Clementoni has also developed a strong international focus over the past two decades, with a particular emphasis on Europe. Back in 1996, international sales made up around 29% of the company’s turnover. Today, that figure is almost 70% - the highest it has ever been.
have always found that the best way to truly understand a company and what makes it tick is to visit its headquarters and see how it operates first-hand. I had the opportunity to do just that this summer with Italian toy specialist Clementoni, which is celebrating its milestone 60th anniversary in 2023. The company was originally founded by Mario Clementoni back in 1963, and the third generation of the Clementoni family is already working in the business.
The company started out as a games supplier: its very first product was a board game produced to coincide with
A move into licensed products was another early milestone; in 1971, Clementoni signed its first licence with Walt Disney for board games, followed two years later by a deal for puzzles. To this day, Clementoni maintains one of the longest partnerships with Disney in the European toy arena.
Clementoni has a strong manufacturing heritage; all of its products are conceived and designed in-house and, wherever possible, manufactured in Italy – at its base in Recanati, a beautiful but relatively unknown area
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on the East coast of Italy. The company, which remains privately-owned, employs 700 people and sold 30m toys last year, 85% of which were made in Italy. Like many toy companies, Clementoni explored Far Eastern production for a while, before reshoring commenced in earnest in 2010. Purchases from China have been halved in the past decade, a move which really paid dividends during the pandemic. The ability to maintain a steady, consistent supply chain stood the company in great stead, while after Covid, the ‘Made in Italy’ concept became more important than ever for consumers in Italy and other key territories. Last year’s strong performance secured Clementoni the number 11 slot in Circana’s EU8 chart, which is a significant achievement when you look at the major global companies which occupy the top 10 slots. While it has a little way to go to replicate that position in the UK Circana list (the company is currently nestled just outside the top 30 suppliers), the company certainly intends to grow its share here in the coming years and has a firm plan to speed up growth not just in the UK, but also other key territories such as Germany and Benelux. In particular, the Infant, Science and Puzzles categories have been identified as major opportunities for growth. In tandem with taking a conscious decision to expand its export business in the late 1990s, the company also decided to extend its product range into new categories. Up to that point, it had primarily focused on the same
