Italian ready-to-wear producer Swinger International (Swinger) is in trouble. The company, based in Bussolengo, near Verona, has been producing jeans and ready-to-wear for major fashion labels since the early 1970s, and is now about to lay off almost half of its workforce.

It will be a very bitter Christmas for Swinger’s employees. Only two weeks after entering an eight-month temporary redundancy procedure relating to its entire workforce, on November 25 the company applied for collective redundancy for 70 of its 148 employees, as reported by local newspaper L’Arena.

The business outlook for Swinger worsened dramatically in the last few months, after the company lost Versace as a client. The Italian luxury label, whose acquisition Prada formally completed last week, single-handedly generated about 80% of Swinger’s revenue, according to union sources. The same sources said that Prada is expected to relocate the manufacturing of Versace products outside Europe.

Contacted by FashionNetwork.com, Swinger declined to comment or make a statement. It said however that the company owners’ reactions to this serious state of affairs will be made known in the coming days.

It is a real shame that Swinger is in such dire straits. From its inception in the 1970s as a small artisanal producer of jeans and later ready-to-wear, Swinger scaled up its business over the decades, securing the licenses of global labels like Roberto Cavalli, Vivienne Westwood, Missoni and Fendi, notably producing ready-to-wear targeted to younger consumers. From the nearly €100 million revenue recorded in 2020, Swinger grew to over €175 million in 2023. In 2011, Swinger had acquired womenswear brand Genny, still part of its portfolio, naming Sara Cavazza Facchini as creative director.

The first union consultation to handle the collective redundancy procedure took place at the offices of Confindustria Verona on Tuesday. Italian labour regulations state that the company owners and employee representatives have 45 days to reach an agreement, plus an additional 30 days during which the Veneto regional authority can be involved in a mediator role. L’Arena newspaper has reported that negotiations have so far been unsuccessful.

On Tuesday December 9, the Filctem-CGIL union refused to sign off on a deal. According to L’Arena, the union’s representatives said that “their requests, including among other provisions a safeguarding clause relating to when the redundancies would start, have not been taken on board.” Moreover, the union said that “the conditions set by the company are absolutely unacceptable, starting with a wholly inadequate resignation bonus.” Filctem-CGIL also said that it will assist individual employees if mandated by them.

Swinger’s current difficulties are said to have started in May, when the company applied for a redundancy procedure for 171 employees, owing to a shortfall in production orders, but things came to a head in late summer, even after 23 workers resigned.