Once upon a time there was paper and on it we started writing our history.

A fan wandered around the paper mills in search of waste materials with which to create choreographies when his favourite team was playing.

Passion became amusement and amusement became a job. Hence the idea to set up a company specialized in the supply of sports entertainment instruments. Nothing similar had ever existed before and the news spread quickly, including beyond national boundaries. To keep everyone happy, the company decided to use the sale by correspondence method.

The light of day

First catalogue. In the early-90s, there was no Internet. T.I.F.O. was established and all work was done on paper medium.

The first catalogue was a "D.I.Y.". During the night, a needle printer wrote the texts on the back of a coloured continuous module.

In the morning, everything was collected up, put in envelopes and mailed.

Dreaming of postalmarket

In 1992, the first catalogue came out of the printers. It was a calendar with the months of the year indicated by means of our articles.

Meanwhile news had got around Europe. One magazine even went so far as to say T.I.F.O. was the best known Italian company among French youngsters. Hence the first catalogue in 5 languages was printed.

Along with the 1994 catalogue, an initiative saw the light that was to last until 2012: IL MEGLIO DEL T.I.F.O. UA trophy awarded to the best choreography created using our products.

A catalogue of ambitions

Our catalogue was so coveted that it was worth taking a risk. Hence, in 1995, a new version came out in the form of a bound and coated diary. Each week was dedicated to one of our articles, 365 photos of scarves, made for fan clubs and the addresses where they could be contacted. To imagine selling a sales catalogue is madness, but our gamble paid off and made us confident we could overcome any obstacle.

In 1996, the company took off, taking with it its most loyal customers, who won a free trip to Wembley!

Reviewing on your screens

The first appearance on the Web was in 1997. At that time, it was still not very populated and therefore paper catalogues continued to be printed. From that time on, the format never changed again: 11x19 cm. The need arose to insert it and therefore combine it with another great idea: a videocassette! Success was immediate. The film, made by a film company, alternated the company’s articles, illustrated by the owner, with footage shot in the stadiums of Europe. The video was dubbed in 4 other languages and to each version was attached a copy of the paper catalogue in the corresponding language. As in the case of the diary, the videocassette was also put on sale and, to a large extent, the proceeds covered the heavy initial investment.

Things went ahead fairly smoothly in the following years and the company’s first website appeared between 1999 and 2000.

The dawn of the new millennium

Lots of new blue ribbons were on the horizon! T.I.F.O. was by now highly fashionable and so it was that in late 1999 it launched its first clothing line: Dimensione Ultras.

In the following February, success reached new heights and was marked by a star from heaven: the heir, the chosen one, he who was to become the most important thing in life and who, after a few months expressed his thanks by starting to work as a model in the family firm.

Dimensione Ultras was however more than just making a profit, it was an attempt to give substance to a shape, the shoot from which the Ultras Movement was to grow, a political/social commitment funded by means of part of the income deriving from the sale of clothing garments.

Such income was paid to ensure transparency on the account of a monk well known in the fan environment. Meanwhile the Movement, torn apart by internal struggles did not even manage to find a common proposal to be able to access these funds and so it was that after a while we found out we had funded something else.

Beyond all limits

Work continued night and day and at weekends we would travel around Italy – sometimes even further afield – to promote our initiatives.

In 2001, another catalogue was printed, despite the Web having launched the company beyond European borders.

The year after, T.I.F.O. officially made it known that no more paper catalogues would be printed. How did it do this? By printing the last catalogue of course! :-)

Double direction of movement

But the paper communication which distinguished our first ten years in business was not a one-way process. Our customers too used paper and many orders even reached us by mail.

Not only orders, but also thanks, mentions in magazines and even in books.

A new age

Meanwhile, the Dimensione Ultras adventure had come to an end. It had been a positive experience which, from a quality viewpoint, had enhanced our way of manufacturing clothes. In terms of relations, the initiative had also enabled us to meet a lot of nice people, in places and circumstances we had never thought possible.

We had however come to appreciate that what our customers liked more than our social commitment was our professionalism and consequently, by means of a page of the Supertifo magazine, in the name of the owner, we announced our disengagement and began concentrating only on our work.

T.I.F.O. today

Over recent years, our goal has been the safety and improvement of what were once artisanal products. We have managed to obtain the certifications required for firework products of our design but which are also distributed to our competitors. We have reached agreements with carriers authorized to transport such products in accordance with the law. We have pushed our imagination to the limit, considering we started off in business collecting waste paper and have ended up making paper that does not burn!

We started with a paper boat, navigated through the web, and on the web we have told you this story, a story that continues...