MADE IN ITALY - SLAM STORY - 30 YEARS RIDING THE WAVE
WORDS: MARIA LUISA FARRIS - Main Sail Magazine, Italy
1979. Four young Genoese boys with a passion for sailing. One of them has a shop: the venue for a new adventure called Slam. Their dream: to work in the world they loved so much, at a time in which professional sailing was yet to come. A small sports clothing company might have, they hoped, combined work and fun…
A date: December 19th, 1979. A group of young sailing enthusiasts: Andrea Zucchi, Luigi Monaco d’Arianella, Giovanni Crosio and Andrea Laura. An innovative material, used, at the time, only for stuffed toys or, occasionally, in the lining of a few items of clothing: thermal fleece, aka "pile".
Upon that day, the four delivered a bundle of sailing jerseys to some teams involved in the Winter Championship: a new, high-tech item, where the day before wool still reigned. In the late '70s, the British teams had begun to use pile in their regattas: our sailors noticed it during competitions, looked for the material in Italy and were the first to use it to design bona fide jerseys and jackets. To this day, the company's senses are tuned to the search for new materials. Practical tests are constantly performed to see whether new offers coming out of the textile industry might be of use to sailors and athletes at sea. That late December evening, the four were in Giovanni Crosio's shop in Genova, and that sale changed their life. Right then and there, they founded Slam. The name – quick and easy to remember – was invented, on the spot, by the young Crosio himself.
OLYMPIC SAILS
Success came just as rapidly. 1980 was the year of the Moscow Olympics and of a bronze medal for the Gorla-–Peraboni team. The two sailed wearing the Mickey Bear jacket, Slam's most thermally insulated and hydro-repellant pile. From that moment onwards, the Genoese brand’s bond with Federvela, the Italian Sailing Federation, was sealed. To this day, Federvela's Olympic athletes are officially supplied by Slam, who has constantly worked to develop innovative solutions for them, such as the Area 51, recently spotted at the Beijing competitions. This jacket was born of the constant, continual cooperation of textile R&D departments with the Universities. Together with Slam, the Polytechnics in Milan and in Turin work on innovative solutions for the textile industry, based on studies performed on athletes both in the lab and on the boats. For example, Area 51 includes a carbon-based fabric over the heart because it was found that this helps prevent fatigue; in total, the article is made of other six different materials, each best suited to covering a specific part of the body.
SPORTSWEAR
Constantly traveling around the world, from regatta to regatta, the four men from Genoa noticed people across the Ocean using cute nylon wallets which closed with a Velcro strip. They started an import business, but neither sports clothing stores nor leather goods retailers wanted anything to do with them. Word-of-mouth prevailed, propelled by people's curiosity... each time someone opened a wallet with its characteristic crackling sound, it made people stop and stare. That simple detail provoked an avalanche of requests, with more than half a million pieces sold.
The Mickey Bear, right, was the first chapter of Slam's adventure, while the wallet, imported rather then directly produced, encouraged the young company to set up a solid distributive structure.
Nevertheless, it true success should not be measured in the momentary cashflow as much as in the fact that the quick peak in sales forced this small, budding company to give itself a solid structure by creating its own distributive network. This cleared the way for future best sellers, including the unforgettable "Slam jacket'. It was 1984 when a prestigious foreign company launched a water-proof jacket inspired by sailing jerseys on the market. It rapidly became the fashion but, as often happens, its "added value" as a trend-setting item influenced the price, making it more or less unattainable to most people.
The key was to produce a similar article, without relinquishing quality, but finding a way to cut costs. Thus, the small Italian company turned into a pioneer of delocalization, looking to the Orient to find structures which could offer a quality product at competitive prices. Success was instantaneous: the jacket proved practically indestructible and highly functional. It could be used for school and in the office, on a motorbike, to go skiing in the weekend: inspired by the sailing world but free to roam, it was pure sportswear. This success from the outside world provided momentum to the production of boatswear which would soon be put to the test in the toughest regattas.
YACHTING
Large sailboats broke into the Italian consciousness with the great ship Azzurra's first adventure in Newport, on the US East Coast. Reinterpreting that classic, stylish look, Slam immediately launched the sailing belt, which would go on to become the most typical souvenir brought back by regatta fans after a competition. Next came the classic sailing jumper, once more inspired by the atmosphere at Newport. This article was employed in 1988 by the Italian teams participating in the Sardina Cup which, together with the Admiral’s, represented the high point of open sea yachting of the time. It was the first product of the new sportsline called Advanced Technology Sportswear. In 1989 the Whitbread race, with Fehlman's Merit, allowed to put all the oilskins to the test: the products’ quality grew exponentially.
The Classic Slam Jacket could comfortably be used for work or play, and was inspired by a similar, highly fashionable and much more expensive, article: it made way for the production of technical oilskins which gave Slam passage on the ship Merit, during the Whitbread race.
The experience was repeated the next year, 1992. Then and now, materials and cuts were constantly updated: at each stop new articles were supplied on board, with improvements based on feedback from the previous leg of the journey. It was a revolution: Slam tested and contributed to the development for maritime use of the first articles in Goretex, before it even had a name. Meanwhile, research on buoy-bound regattas continued, with a bias towards extreme vessels, skiffs and catamarans: highly performative and very, very, very wet places, such as the Australian 18ft, the most technical ship of its time, the top of the sailing classes, and F40 series catamarans, breaking the waves twenty years before the iShares Cup.
RETAIL STORES
If research on the field is the seed from which Slam’s ideas spring and develop, necessarily sales volumes must step in to fertilize the ground. In 1994, times were ripe for the opening of the first Slam shop. It is still thriving, in the beautiful bayside town of Portovenere, in the La Spezia gulf. This small port is a meeting place for pleasure craft owners and experienced seamen alike, as well as being the sea-base of some of the most important sailing schools. The same year, a second brand store opened in the home port of yachting itself: Cowes. Today there are as many as 55 Slam shops, many of which just next door to the most prestigious yacht clubs and in the best-known sailing towns. Slam is in Newport, Rhode Island, and in St. Tropez and Portofino.
Other shops opened within some of the most important outlets in Italy, where larger sales volumes coexist with the image appeal of being right beside some of the greatest Made in Italy brand names. From the mid-nineties onwards, collections have grown to include every possible accessory: in 1996 we produced our first shoe, in 1999 the first ladies’ collection, soon followed by a kid’s line.
The Sailing Jacket is a best seller with more than a million pieces sold, summing the winter and summer versions. In Spain it's referred to as the "Chaqueta de toda la vida", the "lifetime jacket", perfect for any occasion.
R&D
Research and Development: in 2000 sailing incorporated an innovative material, Meryl. In 2003 seamless underwear appeared, in 2004 it was the turn of heat-welded seams, but 2005 was the really important year: Slam began a long-term association with Russell Coutts. More than a simple testimonial, the number-one world sailor is our top “test sailor”. Every Sunday evening he sends us a report asking for adjustments based on the item’s functional response, drafted with the expertise of an engineer as well as of a world champion. In 2008, development tasks were extended from Coutts alone to all of Ellison's team, the BMW Oracle Racing. The next America’s Cup oilskin jackets will be elastic and aerodynamic, because when you are speeding at 25-30 maritime nodes, the air’s friction is really something you want to minimize. To work on an extreme multihull, such as the American 90 footer, materials have to be adapted to the specific case at hand: consider, for example, that on such an ample surface athletes are moving much more than on a traditional vessel in which each team member stays in position for most of the regatta.
Technological transfer flows directly from top-level performance regattas to the public: the same articles provided to the Cup's teams are regularly on sale, allowing every customer to benefit from state-ofthe-art research.
Russel Coutts is much more than a mere testimonial: his experience -- and his BMOR team’s -- actively contributes to the constant improvement and development of Slam’s technical gear.
More than just sailing: technical gear is based on direct, hands-on experience as well as on systematic lab research, in collaboration with universities in Milan and Turin.
Thirty years! Slam’s partnership with the Italian Sailing Federation is unstoppable, as Slam continues to supply Italy’s sailing teams at the Olympics.