Good morning everyone.
My name is Valeria and I’m the Assistant to the Board of Direction and the President, Paolo Trento, one of the founders of Mandarina Duck.
For more than 20 years, I’ve been working for this company and I’ve seen everything there is to see. I’m not very skilled with computers and the Internet but I’ve always been very curious. So, with the help of some younger colleagues, I’m going to try to write some posts on Mandarina Duck’s history.

But first, I would like to tell you how Mandarina Duck’s brand name was created. When the company was still located in a basement in Bologna and its products were still labeled Plastimoda, Paolo Trento and Pietro Mannato, the founders, knew they had a potential goldmine with the Utility, better known as the “small, colored bag” which would become Mandarina’s symbol in a few years. They had decided to invest some money in advertising and chose the Italian fashion magazine with the best reputation, Vogue.

Their first contact was with Franca Sozzani, who was a young journalist at that time. To better understand what type of product they were promoting, she asked Mr. Trento for a color slide - the ancestor of digital images - the usual image medium for magazine publications. While, at that time, Paolo and Pietro knew in which direction they wanted to go, they actually had very little money and experience.
Understanding the situation, Franca Sozzani sent a Vogue photographer, Giorgio Bonazzi, to Bologna. He immediately began building a good professional relationship with Plastimoda.

Mr. Trento showed him the very colorful Utility collection and gave him a detailed description of its innovative characteristics: new materials, vivacity, uniqueness, travel-oriented and internationality.Giorgio told them that the brand name, Plastimoda, just wasn’t good enough. “Plastimoda? It doesn’t sound right. It sounds like a name for baby products. Give me some time and I will give you a new, winning brand name”. And so it was. Paolo and Pietro placed their trust in “Giorgione” to create a new name. A week later, the photographer came back with a small painting of a colored duck, with the brand name “Anatra Mandarina” below it. Giorgio began hailing the characteristics of this duck, which came from far away on the banks of the Ussuri River on the border between Russia and China. It has many joyful colors, it’s a good swimmer and traveler, and, above all, it’s monogamous and, therefore, very faithful.

Paolo and Pietro fell in love with the Mandarina duck immediately and, to be faithful to their dream, chose to have the name in English. And so, Mandarina Duck became the new international brand name of Plastimoda products.

The next step was their first advertising campaign, created by Giorgio, to promote the Utility bag in Vogue magazine. At that time, Giorgio didn’t have an advertising agency but, thanks to his good relationship with Mandarina, he decided to dedicate himself to the business. That was just the beginning of a partnership that would last for many years.

Technorati Tags: Mandarina, Duck, Paolo Trento, Pietro Mannato, Vogue, Franca Sozzani, Mrs Valeria, Aix Galericulata

This entry was posted by Mrs Valeria Friday April 20th, 2007 at 11:44
and is filed under History, Mandarina Duck
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