Survival Stories of Italian SMEs in the Fascist Period

Deglobalization never happens suddenly. It is a slow process, involving shifts in power, trade friction, and geopolitical tensions that seem to erode what, until a moment before, appeared stable. It is happening today, and it happened almost a century ago.

Valeria Giacomin (Bocconi Department of Social and Political Sciences) and Francesco Romagnoli (PhD student in the same department) describe a situation that could belong to the present as much as to the 1930s in a recent article published in the Journal of Management Studies: “The era of hyper-globalization (...) has given way to a period of deglobalization, marked by increasing protectionism, economic nationalism, and geopolitical realignments.”

However, their pages do not deal with multinational giants, but with a more fragile, often invisible universe: that of small- and medium-sized Italian companies, unwitting protagonists of an economy that had decided to turn inwards by decree, ideology, and necessity.

Italy's autarky: a theater show of restrictions and improvisations

Between 1936 and 1943, autarky (i.e., the drive towards an economy less dependent on foreign countries as the consequence of international sanctions against the fascist regime that had invaded Ethiopia) became the unchosen environment for thousands of entrepreneurs. Imports were restricted, prices controlled, raw materials rationed, and even industrial language was steeped in nationalist rhetoric.

In this scenario, Giacomin and Romagnoli followed the tracks of 98 companies seeking financing from the Italian Furniture Institute (IMI), discovering a human landscape made up of hopes, anxieties, improvised strategies, and brilliant insights. Every loan application, every technical report, every exchange of correspondence was cast as a piece of a larger story: mere survival.

In short, deglobalization is not an abstract concept. It is the way a company turns to its warehouse and realizes that what used to come from abroad is now nowhere to be found. It is the choice between laying off employees or reinventing oneself. It is a matter of life and death for a company.

Stories of companies that reinvented themselves

Among the testimonies that have emerged from the archives, some are striking for their ability to transform an existential risk into a strategic leap.

SAIWA: from luxury brand to the home oven

SAIWA, to this day a well-known brand of biscuits for everyday consumption, was in the 1930s an almost artisan company specializing in niche products. The crisis hit hard: new taxes made its ingredients more expensive, while international demand fell. For many companies at the time, this would have been a fatal blow. But SAIWA reacted by reinventing itself, opting to become what it had never been before: a volume brand.

The authors describe the moment when this metamorphosis took place: “SAIWA managed to swiftly pivot to a different strategy, producing goods for a domestic mass. This strategy immediately paid off: SAIWA’s financial performance rebounded, returning to profitability in 1935 and doubling sales figures in 1936.”

This is the story of a company that understood that its future no longer lay in luxury, but in the mass market. One detail speaks volumes: it guarded the refined look of its packaging, as if its more elegant identity did not want to disappear completely, but rather transform itself.

Ducati: patriotism as an industrial strategy

A completely different atmosphere surrounds Ducati, then a manufacturer of precision instruments. It chose not to just reorganize the product catalog, but to embrace a narrative: to cast the company as a pillar of Italian technological self-sufficiency.

In the documents submitted to the IMI, the company stated: “For ten years, Ducati has produced only previously imported materials. (...) In the event of war (...) [it] could become one of the most important factories for precision devices for artillery, cannon calibers, projectiles, and special equipment for the Air Force, Navy, and Motorized Army.”

In other words, Ducati understood that, in times of economic nationalism, it was not enough to produce: it was necessary to embody a role, to be necessary to the country's political project. This insight opened the doors to funding and laid the foundations for the industrial reputation that would accompany them in the years to come.

The unwritten rules of resilience

Between the lines of their study, Giacomin and Romagnoli do not stop at what companies did, expanding the focus on what they learned. Their analysis suggests that, in times of deep crisis, strength derives not only from productive capacity, but also from narrative flexibility, speed of reconfiguration, and readiness to align with the political wind.

One passage makes this clear: “The key is to pivot toward broader, locally oriented market segments where domestic brand loyalty can be a powerful competitive advantage.”

The SMEs that survived were able to redefine their audience, rethink their products, and change their identity when necessary. Without this flexibility, many did not make it through the war.

A legacy for the present

The narrative strength of this study is that it does not only talk about the past. It is also about a current state of things that is slowly revealing itself. Today's dynamics—from trade wars between major powers to disruptions in value chains, from tariffs to new industrial policies—echo those of the past, and the reactions of Italian SMEs in the 1930s look almost like an instruction manual for what lies ahead.