The new Heritage Department at Tecnica Group: the company’s history becomes shared culture
Valuing one's history does not only mean preserving the past, but above all creating a living heritage capable of inspiring and guiding the future. With this vision, Tecnica Group has launched an ambitious project: the creation of a department dedicated exclusively to the management and enhancement of the company's heritage.
Part of the Italmobiliare portfolio since 2017, Tecnica Group is an Italian leader in the sporting goods industry, specializing in winter and outdoor sports equipment, with iconic brands such as Tecnica, Nordica, Blizzard, Moon Boot, Lowa, and Rollerblade. Founded by Giancarlo Zanatta in 1963, the Group has grown and evolved over time, also through strategic acquisitions of important brands, some of which have a century-long history.
The new Heritage Department of the Tecnica Group was created precisely out of an awareness of the strategic importance of organizing and enhancing this heritage to make it a distinctive element of communication and corporate culture. The Group has set itself the goal of collecting, cataloging, and archiving materials scattered throughout the Group's companies, often stored in a fragmented and inconsistent manner.
The first phase of the project involved intensive research and collection, both within and outside the Group, through interviews with employees and former employees, consultation of the personal archives of long-standing collaborators, and the recovery of materials held by international branches, museums, and private collections. Once collected, all the material was cataloged and archived in analog or digital format. This last phase was particularly challenging: thousands of pages of catalogs, advertisements, photographs, videos, and slides were carefully digitized and archived. This meticulous work resulted in the creation of a digital archive with over 2,500 entries and approximately 20,000 related thematic pages. At the same time, a physical archive was created, housing 1,800 shoes and over 200 unique accessories, concrete evidence of the history and evolution of the products.
The next ambitious step in the project is the creation of a corporate museum, a place whose goal will be not only to celebrate the history of the Group, but also to create a space open to the community, capable of inspiring new generations and stimulating reflection on sports and industrial culture.
The direct involvement of the Zanatta family and a specially formed group of professionals has been fundamental to the project, demonstrating the strategic value of this initiative. The new department works closely with various company departments, such as research and development, design, communications, and human resources, fostering a dialogue that ensures the historical heritage is constantly valued.
To keep this corporate heritage alive, Tecnica Group plans regular internal and external communication activities: dedicated content is published weekly on the company intranet, with the aim of engaging and informing employees in branches around the world. In addition, the Heritage Department has become an essential point of reference for the historical and narrative reconstruction of brands and products on the occasion of important anniversaries, corporate events, and co-branding initiatives.
Through this innovative department and its related cultural initiatives, Tecnica Group confirms its determination to transform its corporate heritage not only into a historical memory, but also into a dynamic and strategic resource for the future.