Who we are

120 YEARS – 4 GENERATIONS

In the year 1904, Mr. Pietro Barbieri founded the Tessitura Pietro Barbieri in the village of Fontane-Treviso, producing cotton fabrics clothes for sheets, clothes for shirts and Massaua fabric used for work clothes production. The company’s growth was hindered by the outbreak of the First World War, which forced it to continually close and reopen. After about twenty years of post-war growth, it was the Second World War that halted production activities, especially in northern Italy.

Fortunately, the ‘Italian miracle’ that broke out in the immediate post-war period saw the company expand its activities by reaching new markets in Italy and employing around 150 people, mostly women, in a purely agricultural area. The arrival on the Italian markets of cotton fabrics from the Far East (Pakistan, India, etc.) caused, at the end of the 1960s, a severe crisis among all Italian producers in the sector, many of whom were forced to close.

To try to cope with the difficult situation, the company opened an inhouse workshop with 20 or so workers who made work clothes from the fabrics produced by the company. In 1992, the 4th generation of the family, Paola and Stefania Barbieri with their cousin Roberto Vendrami, founded GLOBAL TRADING s.r.l., and began importing fabrics and workwear from Eastern European countries. In the years that followed, the company began collaborating with important garment makers in the Far East who produce on Global Trading patterns and instructions on the accessories to be used in the garments.