Acceleration program for fashion and design SMEs
Collanine Colorate is one of the Lombardy-based businesses taking part in Artigiani 4.0, an accelerator program promoted by Regione Lombardia and run by Upskill 4.0, with support from the European PR FESR 2021–2027 fund.
The project aims to support local artisan businesses as they grow through two key areas: brand strategy and Industry 4.0 technologies.
A journey of transformation
Over twelve months, Collanine Colorate and the other participating businesses followed a program divided into four phases:
- Analysis and company visits
- Advanced training
- Project development
- Strategy and go-to-market
The European context: Coesione Italia
Artigiani 4.0 is part of the 2021–2027 cohesion policy, which introduced “Coesione Italia” as a common brand for all European Structural and Investment Funds for the first time.
Introduced by the Department for Cohesion Policies of the Italian Presidency of the Council of Ministers, the brand aims to make European investments more recognizable and improve the visibility of their results and tangible impact on citizens’ lives (EU Regulation No. 1060/2021, Articles 46–50).
Communication activities are an integral part of funded projects. Applying the requirements correctly is a specific condition of the funding calls; failure to comply may result in a reduction of the contribution of up to 3%. At the same time, communication offers a valuable opportunity to highlight results, reach new stakeholders and attract investors.
Guidelines for consistent communication, both offline and online, are set out in Regione Lombardia’s PR FESR 2021–2027 brand book, which includes practical instructions and logos in various formats.
Collanine Colorate’s project
The project was developed to improve the e-commerce site’s performance and turn it into a stronger, more scalable platform aligned with the brand’s evolution. It began with an analysis of the issues affecting conversion rates, focusing in particular on the user experience, mobile navigation, the clarity of the checkout process, cart management and the site’s ability to guide customers from product discovery through to completing an order.
Go-to-market
The Implementation and Go-to-Market Plan aims to turn the work completed into an operational roadmap for growth. This meant more than launching the new site: it involved building a sales and communication system capable of attracting qualified traffic, increasing conversion rates, encouraging repeat purchases and making Collanine Colorate’s presence more consistent across different touchpoints.
The result is a sales model that is more measurable, more sustainable and less dependent on manual or fragmented processes.
This website was created with the support of Regione Lombardia’s European Regional Development Fund Regional Programme (PR FESR 2021–2027).