We define as a “Historic Enterprise” a company (editor’s note: intended as a more than a century-old brand from Italy) that, both in the past and in the present, with a strong dynamic drive towards the future, has proved its effectiveness in making business and increasing productivity within a social and cultural context. A one-hundred-year timeframe of active and ethically consistent presence on the market is required for a company to be defined as such.

The Italian Historic Companies Association (“Unione Imprese Storiche Italiane”), which encompasses ultra-centenary companies with a solid and prestigious background, is animated by a strong cultural inspiration, capitalising on the commercial expertise of each single member of the Association. 

The Association was born in 2000 on the initiative of Franco Torrini and Eugenio Alphandery, who regrouped eleven historical companies from Florence and established the “Associazione Imprese Storiche fiorentine” in Palazzo Vecchio. Six years later, AISF welcomed other ultra-centenary members from Tuscany, thus changing its denomination and becoming the “Unione Imprese Storiche Toscane”. In February 2012, it became the “Unione Imprese Storiche Italiane”, a national-level reality whose associates represent most of the Italian regions.

This is the past, present and future of Italy, a country that projects itself into tomorrow by relying on the historic brands that are part of the Association and by moving the vectors of productivity and economy in an open-ended, constantly shifting context.

The ultra-centenary brands belonging to the Association represent the most sincere expression of entrepreneurial quality and the force of a tradition that is rooted in the territory but  nourished by a constantly-renewing spirit of innovation.

Centrifugal impulses from every corner of Italy have crossed national borders as the highest expression of the originality that is typical of Made in Italy products.

The common denominator of the more than a century-old brands that make up the association is the illustrious debt they owe to the past and the conspicuous asset they can claim in the future. The debt is the significant tradition that urge us to encourage new efforts in terms of enterprise; the credit is an open wager on the future and the acceptance of the infinite challenges it poses, a challenge already accepted and already won in the past.