The promotional sphere was still far from Stefano Di Saverio's plans when Silicon, the Teramo company (with an operating office in Milan) that he still manages today, came into existence in 1984. Instead, the objects on the horizon of the then 25-year-old entrepreneur, were electronics and watches, which Di Saverio imported from the Far East and distributed to Italian jewellers under the Regolo brand.

All this until the turn of the 90s, when mobile telephony began to snatch market shares in an increasingly overwhelming way from wristwatches, now considered by many to be a useless duplicate of the functions built into mobile phones.

“My luck back then,” Di Saverio recalls, “lay in the fact that all those watches were assembled in Hong Kong, which at that time was the only gateway to the Chinese market. So we started offering other items, in particular caps, which opened the doors to the promotional market for us. Then umbrellas, backpacks and bags followed, not to mention that the watches had also found a niche for themselves in that channel. That kind of diversification kept us in the market, while those who were left with a single product are now gone.”

Despite their extensive product portfolio, summed up accurately in the approximately 400 pages of the Silicon catalogue, Di Saverio and his partners (who are his family members) have had to deal with increasingly fierce competition from the multinationals, whose methods and innovations they emulate.

So, while before Silicon was a “pure” importer and distributor, in the new millennium the company equipped itself with an internal customisation system with two in-house graphic designers. Its technology of choice is laser technology; however, there is also a small screen printing set-up for any samples required, or any emergencies that may arise, even if the rule is to outsource screen printing to third-party printers.
However. when it comes to sustainability, Silicon has always been a forerunner: “I covered my warehouse,” stresses the CEO, “with 1,200 photovoltaic panels, not just yesterday, but back in 2011. This system means that I am not only self-sufficient for energy but also generate enough to sell to Enel. Our ecological vocation is expressed most effectively in the Save the Planet line of the Silicon catalogue: items made with sustainable materials, from RPET to recycled aluminium and steel. Today, out of the 10 new items we add, at least seven are made with these materials.” Not to mention the advantages for the environment that derive from the adoption of techniques such as drop shipping (following Amazon’s lead), with direct delivery of the printed product to the customer and not to the agency, thereby avoiding unnecessary transport and triangulation.
After overcoming the Covid crisis, today Silicon is a company with a turnover of about 12 million euros and 28 employees, numerous independent collaborators and operations that extend far beyond the Italian borders.

But its desire to grow is still strong: “In our future, we see investments aimed mainly at the digital sphere,” explains Stefano Di Saverio, “the Silicon platform is an open-all-hours construction site and we are starting to talk about AI to make product research increasingly effective. Ours is a company that has always invested, and will do so until the very end.”