Bolzano Centro/Bozen Zentrum, Bolzano/Bozen, Bolzano/Bozen and environs
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If only walls could talk, this building alone would be worth a visit. It was home for 170 years to a dynasty which traded in fabrics, founded by the cloth merchant Anton Oberrauch, and is now a successful Italian fashion and sporting goods empire. When renovating the premises in the 1950s, the operation was seen as an opportunity to rethink the business – which is what the head of the family did. Heinrich Oberrauch (†2017) converted the fabric shop into a prêt-aporter shop and merged it with the Zitt fashion store (which belonged to his mother Julie Zitt in Merano). Et voila, the Oberrauch Zitt brand was born. A brand which also encapsulated a guiding principle, i.e. leveraging tradition and reinterpreting it. The flash of genius struck Heinrich during his honeymoon in Scandinavia when he noticed how Norwegian sweaters were flying off the shelf when marketed as souvenirs. That was the beginning of the traditional costume and loden fashion brand, Oberrauch Zitt, with Luis Trenker one of its most loyal customers. Nowadays, when you think of “loden” you automatically think of Oberrauch Zitt – a fabric that soon helped South Tyrol to market itself as a tourism destination besides staple “products” such as apples, wine and the Dolomites. Train stations are weird, wonderful places – but surely the sight of lodens being delivered while trains passed by Bolzano must have been a bit too much! But that’s just how much Oberrauch Zitt’s loden were appreciated. One of Heinrich’s sons – current owner Heiner Oberrauch – became the store’s manager in 1999 and founded the Lodenwelt in Vandoies, which also included a museum, as well as the Oberalp/SALEWA group of sporting goods together with his brother Georg (see globus on page 47), the Sportler company and many, many more.
