MUNO Bets on Execution: New COO Marco Careglio Tasked With Turning Ambition Into Global Scale

When a manufacturer says it wants to “turn ambition into execution,” the words usually arrive bundled with a leadership change. That is precisely what happened at MUNO, the leather and fashion manufacturing group, which has named Marco Careglio as its new Chief Operating Officer. The appointment is more than a routine reshuffle at the top. It signals a company betting that operational discipline — not just design or brand storytelling — will decide who survives the next decade of a squeezed, fast-moving leather goods market.

Careglio is no stranger to complex industrial turnarounds. He arrives with more than 25 years of international experience spanning operations, supply chain, manufacturing excellence, business transformation and post-merger integration. Across his career he has steered organisations through restructuring, performance improvement and cultural change in multiple industries and geographies. In his new role he will support MUNO’s push to lift operational performance and tighten integration across a global organisation that has grown through acquisition as much as through organic expansion.

The language MUNO used to announce the hire is telling. Operational excellence, the company said, sits alongside technical expertise, innovation and global capability as the pillars of its strategy. In an industry where margins are eroded by volatile raw material costs, rising labour expenses in traditional manufacturing hubs and relentless pressure from low-cost competitors, that framing matters. A leather goods maker can have the most desirable product in the catalogue, but if it cannot coordinate functions, standardise quality across locations and deliver consistently, ambition stalls at the prototype stage.

Careglio himself put it plainly: his focus will be on connecting people, processes and capabilities to “build an organization ready to grow and deliver at its best.” That is a polite but pointed way of saying MUNO intends to fix the plumbing — the unglamorous work of alignment that determines whether a global footprint becomes a competitive advantage or a cost centre.

The move also fits a broader pattern in the leather and footwear supply chain. Over the past two years, brands and manufacturers alike have been forced to confront the fragility exposed by disrupted logistics, shifting trade rules and the slow migration of production away from China toward South and Southeast Asia. MUNO’s recent appointment of Ashok Sambandam as Managing Director for India and Bangladesh underscores where the growth is expected to come from: large, young, cost-competitive workforces and deepening domestic demand.

For the wider industry, the lesson is that the centre of gravity is moving from pure craft toward integrated operational capability. The ateliers that thrive will be those that pair artisanal skill with disciplined systems — predictable lead times, traceable materials, and the ability to scale a hero product without sacrificing the qualities that made it a hero in the first place.

There is a human dimension too. Operational excellence programmes live or die on whether frontline managers buy in. Careglio’s track record in post-merger integration suggests he understands that transformation is as much about people as about key performance indicators. If he can translate MUNO’s global ambition into local execution — in India, in Bangladesh, and in its European bases — the appointment will look prescient. If not, it will join the long list of reorganisations that promised scale and delivered slides.

Either way, the signal is clear: in 2026, leather manufacturing leadership is no longer a craft-only story. It is an operations story.

Source: Leathernews.org