The company

ALU is a fresh and unconventional firm and has been right from its origins. It grew out of an idea that flashed across the mind of Lino Manfrotto when, in 1987, he was at the New York trade fair observing the success of the Autopole product, invented by the family firm and intended for photographers' studios: dozens of creative visual people used it to install retail spaces and windows.

A year later, ALU opened its first show room in New York devoted exclusively to retail. A few year later, and out of the success in the American market, the company, who's headquarters were in Italy, decided to offer its products to the European and other international markets as well. Autopole is a long-seller of success which is still going strong worldwide today.

ALU today is one of the world's leading manufacturers and distributors of first-class point-of-sale fixtures and merchandising systems and is still owned by the Manfrotto family. ALU has a staff of 90 in Europe and 40 in the USA. Some 12 designers are employed in its Product Design and Development Department, at the company headquarters at Romano d'Ezzelino (VI) Italy. Recently it has also opened an executive office in Shanghai to meet the needs of the strongly expanding Chinese market.

The company's offerings fall into four categories: standard products, personalised standard products, fully customised design systems and retail implementation services.

The standard range offers a wide variety of readily available systems for communication, visual merchandising and display. Each year at least two or three new systems are added to the existing range.

All standard systems can be easily personalised to specific needs.

The fully customised systems are created by in-house designers to fully match each company's requirements.

ALU has supplied numerous department stores and fashion boutiques including Sears, Hudson Bay, Debenhams, H&M, Zara, GAP and Benetton as well as store-in-store systems for Nokia shops in Europe, Middle East and Africa. In addition, it serves electronics and telecommunications companies such as Sony, as well as renowned banks and car manufacturers, for instance Philip Morris, BMW/Mini and Chevrolet Europe. Even though their specific requests involve the supply of considerable resources, ALU is an all-round solutions provider and can handle even the most demanding projects including logistics and installation. ALU products are distributed internationally through a network of owned and independent distributors. ALU has subsidiaries in Paris, Stockholm, Munich, Shanghai and New York as well as a number of distributors in other countries such as Holland, Belgium, Spain, Australia, Hong kong and more. 85% of sales are due to exports, and almost half of this figure is generated by sales in the USA. Production mostly takes place in specialised factories in the proximity of major project sites. Planning and quality control, however, is directly overseen by ALU's headquarters in Romano d'Ezzelino, Italy.