The Centrovetro Consortium, founded in Empoli on 15 July 1970, arose from the need to relaunch in the Empoli district a productive sector active in the area ever since the 15th century, but which since the Second World War had steadily lost the status and image built up over so many years. This situation made it necessary to create an Association which would not only look after the Member Businesses, at a particularly delicate time of social, political and economic transition, but which would also coordinate purchases and sales, and at the same time promote the image of the Members to the wider world.

In the first years, the Consortium mostly took care of the sales of the Members’ products, negotiating prices and conditions for the purchase of raw materials for its Members, taking part in the most important promotional events, exhibitions and trade fairs held both in Italy and abroad, in order to build up a foreign clientele for the businesses comprising the Consortium.

Considering the importance of exports, and realising the need for the Member businesses to be more visible in international markets, in 1989 the Centrovetro Consortium was transformed into an Export Consortium, and thus became an entirely promotional organisation, not operating for its own profit, modifying its Statute and operational emphasis. This change was strongly endorsed by the Members which now required more focussed and specialised services for promotion abroad, rather than just commercial support in the Italian market. The Consortium still represents an important reference point both for small industrial concerns and also for handicraft businesses, which would otherwise find it difficult to operate in new and distant markets.

The international vocation of the Member businesses has meant that the Consortium has been present at various important promotional events abroad, inviting delegations of foreigners working in the sector to visit the glass and crystal workshops, and contacting specialised journals which can boost this sector producing giftware, items for the table and the kitchen, and furnishing and lighting accessories. At the present time the Centrovetro Consortium brings together 21 enterprises in the sector (all operating in the Empoli district), that is to say practically all the enterprises working in this sector in this particular area. In only a few years, the Members have managed to penetrate all the markets of the world, including the most complex (the United States, Japan, Russia.