While luxury groups are on the prowl to buy rival brands and grow bigger, another M&A wave is gaining pace in a sector highly strategic for the Italian economy: the manufacturing of fashion and luxury goods. Italy is where no less than 80 percent of the world’s luxury products are made. It is a fragmented industry that employs hundreds of thousands of people directly and indirectly and involves mostly small and medium-sized family-owned business. At the same time, their clients, big luxury groups such as LVMH, Kering and Richemont, are getting bigger and bigger. And these groups constantly expect better and faster service. In recent years, they have also introduced tedious corporate reporting processes, involving countless spreadsheets, which small companies find time-consuming.