PRESENT
MIPEL FACTORY
February 22-24, 2026
This is the third edition of Arsutoria School’s Mipel Factory area, a space at the fair where buyers are given a personalized leather gadget with their initials. We started with a keychain in the first edition, we designed and created a coin purse in the last edition, and in this third edition we’ll be giving away a charm—a star in keeping with the fair’s theme—that women can attach to their bags.
This project has been made possible by
THE PRODUCTION PROCESS
WATCH IT LIVE
POWERED BY
Behind the counter where two Arsutoria School teachers will be personalizing the charms, there will be a production line that will demonstrate, during the fair days, how the charms are made. Buyers will be able to see firsthand how much technology and design effort goes into the making of an apparently simple object like a small charm.
Make it yours
During the fair, buyers will be able to present themselves in pavilion 5 in the M&M Hub area and colleagues from Arsutoria School will use the two Galli hot stamping machines and the Bugetti clichés to imprint each buyer’s initials on the outside of the leather star.
HOW
THE PROCESS
Below you will find an explanation of the materials and technologies we used to create the charm that we will give to buyers during the Mipel days.
The materials
We selected a calfskin sourced from the Gruppo Mastrotto online Express portal, and a Density foam by Pidigi. For the outer part of the charm, we chose the Seta article from Gruppo Mastrotto: a leather with excellent body, a very soft hand feel, and a not overly pronounced texture that allows us to hot-stamp easily on the grain side of the leather.
The online portal offers a wide range of colors that are always available in stock: we chose a midnight blue consistent with the color palette of this edition’s Mipel campaign. The Seta article is offered in a thickness ranging from 0.9 to 1.2 mm, in half-calf hides of approximately 2 square meters.
Prepare the pieces
We start the production process with the Atom 888 automatic cutting table, which allows us to obtain the charm shapes by cutting the two materials we have chosen.
To uniform the leather thickness, we used a Camoga splitting machine, which allowed us to obtain perfectly consistent pieces. The Density foam, on the other hand, is an excellent material for achieving the internal padding: it has a thickness of 6 mm and excellent shape memory that prevents permanent deformation even after the material has been subjected to repeated compressions.
ASSEMBLY
Assembly of the parts then begins — an apparently simple activity but in reality extremely complex, as it requires precision to the tenth of a millimeter in the positioning of the three parts. We were assisted by GL Formax of Scandicci, who produced the assembly jigs: structures in plexiglass and metal that allow us to maintain perfect alignment between the different parts.
GLUEING
The three pieces must be glued together: we did this with the help of Angeleri, whose gluing machine equipped with an automatic vision system allows us to apply adhesive to the parts to be bonded in an extremely precise and uniform manner. It is remarkable how even the way adhesive is applied can create imperfections in the final result: a single extra gram of glue in one spot of the little star risks becoming visible once the parts have been pressed together.
We used a water-based polychloroprene adhesive by Industrie Chimiche Forestali, which is sprayed onto the surfaces to be bonded, is immediately tacky without needing reactivation, and is effective even while the surface is still moist and the dispersing medium — water — has not yet fully evaporated.
PRESSING
Once the adhesive has been applied to the parts and the assembly jig used to position the foam between the two leather halves of the little star, it is necessary to press the resulting sandwich so that the perimeter edges of the two outer leather pieces adhere to each other, allowing the automatic stitching to proceed.
For this operation we used a pressing jig made by GL Formax, which allows us to compress the three assembled layers (leather–foam–leather) and maintain adhesion between the two leather halves along the outer perimeter while the padding recovers its shape and creates the central rounded dome.
ACCESSORIES
At this point, the Max Metal clip is attached to the tip of the little star by means of a leather strap. The strap was made by the company MAC of Povolaro using the same leather as the charm, with a fabric tape inserted inside to give it structure.
This produced a kind of “mignon” — a semi-finished component typically used as a strap for women’s elegant sandals. The strip produced was cut to size, skived at the terminal end to prevent the thickness inserted into the tip of the little star from creating unsightly bulges, and then closed with glue after inserting the closed ring of the clip.
To insert the strap into the tip of the little star, a small strip of double-sided tape was used: a structural bond was not necessary at this stage since everything would subsequently be stitched.
Stitching
The time then comes to stitch the perimeter of the charm.
We decided to work with automatic stitching machines and turned to Linea 20, who did an extraordinary job creating an automatic stitching program, a positioning jig for the little star on the machine, and modifying — through their in-house workshop — a specific part of the sewing machine to ensure a perfect stitch.
TRIMMING
To stitch the little star on the automatic machine, it was necessary for the outer leather shape to be constructed with a couple of extra millimeters of material around the outer perimeter. This excess material must be removed once the stitching is complete. This is a typical leatherworking operation known as “trimming” (ritrancio). Once again we used a tool made by GL Formax — a steel die milled from solid stock, paired with another positioning jig — and for this operation we used an ARES precision press.
Edge Finishing
Once the trimming is complete, all that remains is the edge painting of the charm. If any slight imperfection is visible along the outer perimeter, we use the OMAC finishing machine to work the surface. We then apply the edge paint using the OMAC edge painter and oven so that the color is applied as uniformly as possible and dried to set on the edge without creating unsightly smudging.
EXPERIENCE IT LIVE
GET YOUR CUSTOM CHARM AT MIPEL FACTORY
22-24 February
2026
Rho Fiera
Milan
M&M Hub
@ HALL 5
Watch our craftsmen bring these charms to life at the M&M Hub.
A joint initiative with Arsutoria School, Mipel and Simac Tanning Tech