A Breathing Fibre for Workwear

Established in 2012 as safety division of Orion footwear factory, in just five years Dike is a successful business well known in as many as 34 countries beside Italy. In 2016, they started a workwear range, unconventional, based on technical components, modern features and design as well. Here too, they are successful…
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workwear
100% Dike Cotton® jersey and piqué polo shirts
workwear
100% Dike Cotton® jersey and piqué polo shirts

After thirty years’ experience in footwear making, the idea came to achieve something new, durable, high quality, focused on research to meet the demand of all workers. This was the premise of ‘Dike’, an in house safety division, conceived in 2012 at Orion, innovative and value-packed. From the very start, Dike was entrusted Sergio Reniero, Business Unit Director, for his extensive experience on the field. We asked him to tell us about these first five years of business and about the upcoming clothing range.

Design, Made in Italy, Service

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Sergio Reniero, Business Unit Director of Dike

«Dike is the English word for dam, barrier –Sergio Reniero explains – clearly suggesting protection from dangers that threaten workers’ safety. From the beginning, we intended to focus on comfort and health. Since 2012, we have been investing huge resources in research, design, exclusive patents, with technology being the key concept of our products and trying to differentiate ourselves from existing shoes for workers and workwear. We based our business on three pillars: a mixed, sophisticated design referred to casualwear more than to safety at work, colour to meet the taste and the personality of workers and to bring fun in an environment of historically plain and rather gloomy garments and accessories. Then, a 100% made in Italy manufacture, entirely made in Verona for clothing and in the Padua area for made in Italy footwear, made of local raw materials, from local suppliers, ensuring a top quality. Finally, 48 hours delivery, offering our customers the opportunity to get rid of stocks and inventory. It all depends on an extremely quick order processing cycle, based on a capillary organisation and a centralised manufacturing system».

An Innovative Workwear Range

Considering how successful new Dike products have been in the last few years and thanks to the rating from users, both men and women – for whom we conceived and manufactured a dedicated feminine range, the path toward a further workwear range was short. In fact, in late 2016 we brought to market a colourful and mixed workwear range. The line was so successful that early 2017 we extended the range. Today, we offer modern, practical garments, ranging from polo shirts to T-shirts, trousers, sweats, jackets, from caps to gloves, to special socks with magnetic stimulation to improve one’s wellbeing. These garments are completely new to the industry, so trendy, colourful and moisture-wicking, resistant yet delicate on the skin, comfortable to ensure freedom of movement. «All of our garments in contact with the body are made of pure cotton – Reniero explains – with 2% elastomer to obtain an ergonomic effect. Our strategy is to avoid cotton polyester; in fact, we were able to get to the same result in terms of stability and toughness both thanks to the piece-died process, which besides making every garment a unique piece with different shades and nuances, requires an extremely high processing temperature. This process obtains a stabilized fabric that does not change when washed repeatedly, also due to top quality, long filament noble cotton as basic material. We have patented Dike

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Dike Cotton® is the cotton Dike have chosen for their garments. A live fibre that breathes, adapts and reacts to external factors; it is highly breathable, facilitating
heat exchange between your body and the surrounding environment, guaranteeing adequate protection from both heat and cold
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Target, a T-Shirt pattern. The T-shirts are made of 100% Dike Cotton® jersey. The special DCS (Dike Comfort Stretch) yarn treatment guarantees freedom of movement and great comfort

Cotton®, a live fibre that breathes, adapts and reacts to external factors, is highly breathable facilitating heat exchange between your body and the surrounding environment, guaranteeing adequate protection from both cold and heat. Number of patents cover our clothing and bestow the garment a high added value with uncommon function features, new in the safety segment of this industry».

A Strong, Future Oriented Identity

An eye catcher and a hallmark of all Dike product is for sure the colourful, tiny striped pattern of footwear lining, now transferred also to clothing, labels, packaging as a further sign of a brand they are building up. «Nowadays, you need a strong identity – Reniero adds – to build your future. It is not so easy, yet the figures prove us right. After a soft beginning in 2012, we steadily doubled our turnover in the following three years. We are still growing and should close this year at approximately 10 million Euro.

Our next target is set in 2022, when we should be able to sell one million pairs of shoes, on the medium to high-end market, the same bracket of clothing, plus 300,000 garments with a total turnover of approximately 45-50 million Euro. This is Dike’s outlook. We keep on track to hit the target. We work to make Dike items go hand in hand with safety, life-style, a way of being, based on practicality of function, quality, fitting and comfortable garments and shoes; last but not least, we consider the pleasure of a nice workwear, modern, novel and colourful, as well as suitable and appropriate. Dike gives you the opportunity to express your personality, your identity both at work and in the private sphere».