Sagra del Castagno di Marone: B2B merch for chestnut growers, brotherhoods and sponsors of the Valle del Cavallino festival

Merchandising for the Sagra del Castagno di Marone

Dates

Three October weekends each year (2026: 10–11 October, 17–18 October, 24–25 October)

Venue

Historic centre of Marone and chestnut-grove trails of the Valle del Cavallino — Piazza Marconi, Via IV Novembre, Località Piazze, Località Pregasso

Organiser

Pro Loco Marone with the patronage of the Comune di Marone, the Comunità Montana del Sebino Bresciano and the Consorzio Castanicoltori del Sebino

The Sagra del Castagno di Marone is the chestnut harvest festival that each October, across three weekends, brings to life the village of Marone on Lake Iseo with a programme focused on the Sebino marrone and the chestnut tradition of the Valle del Cavallino and the Brescia side of the lake. The sagra has been running since the second post-war period and since then has gathered the local growers, the marrone brotherhoods, the chestnut dryers, the local restaurateurs and the delegations from the comuni of the Sebino across three weekends that combine the harvest in the chestnut groves of the Valle del Cavallino, the roasted chestnuts in the village piazzas, the Sebino marrone and Marone polenta tastings in the lakefront venues and the calendar of autumn dinners held in the restaurants of the historic centre. It is the moment when the chestnut production of the Sebino meets the local audience, the trade operators and the corporate sponsors who accompany the festival with their own merchandising that is consistent with their brand while respecting the traditional frame of the sagra.

For the chestnut growers, the brotherhoods and the sponsors preparing merchandise around the Sagra del Castagno, the operational window is distributed across three weekends and opens ideally on Friday of the first round with the arrival of the first delegations and the first supply-chain meetings, continues on Saturday and Sunday with the roasted-chestnut and tasting schedule, and closes on Sunday evening of the third round with the closing dinner and the Castagno d'Oro award. Distribution of material is therefore structured in three moments: first weekend for representational labels destined for the partner growers and the institutional delegations, second weekend for the high-volume material destined for the roasted-chestnut stalls in the piazzas, and third weekend for the material destined for the autumn dinners in the lakefront restaurants. For corporate teams that want to cover the entire calendar we propose a programme split across the three rounds, with separate lots per recipient and a single delivery window on Friday morning of the first weekend toward a single hub in Marone.

Coordinating artwork, lot labels, delivery windows and named contacts is what keeps the kit on the third-weekend dinner table or in the second-weekend roasted-chestnut stall rather than stranded in a courier warehouse. We run pre-production (physical sample, Pantone colour map inspired by the tones of the Sebino marrone, debossing proof on local chestnut wood, on Manerbio ceramic and on copper, screen-print proof on Camunian-checked cotton), production on Italian supply chains — chestnut wood from the Valle del Cavallino and Cuneo, Manerbio and Caltagirone ceramic, Brescia paper mills of Toscolano Maderno, Scandicci leather, Maniago steel, Como silk — and delivery to a Marone or Iseo hotel, a grower seat or a sponsor residence on a slot the cohort has confirmed. For programmes that mix chestnut growers, corporate sponsors, trade press and Lake Iseo tourist hospitality, we split into lots labelled per recipient, with separate delivery addresses if a Milan- or Brescia-based sponsor wants a share of the kit collected from its own office rather than from the Marone hub.

A recurring case for our clients is the autumn dinners in the lakefront restaurants: the guest count is finalised only close to the third weekend and the menus are often customised with traditional Sebino and Camunian dishes — spiedo bresciano, polenta di Marone, missoltini from the lake, formaggella of the Sebino, Garda PDO oil. In these jobs we propose a neutral graphic base — coordinated marks applied to placemats, coasters, chestnut-wood place cards and small cardboard — and add the hosting grower's details in a second wave at short run, so that each guest finds a coordinated keepsake of the evening. For harvest-day participants who want a small personal kit — silk foulard, Manerbio ceramic cup, chestnut-wood object — we replicate the pieces in a separate pack that is delivered directly to the grower seats on Saturday afternoon. Print quality on FSC-certified paper and organic cotton is a frequent request for brand teams, and we handle it with screen-printing and digital-printing partners registered with FSC and GOTS certification circuits.

On the commissioning side, the Sagra del Castagno di Marone is supported by the Comune di Marone, the Pro Loco Marone, the Comunità Montana del Sebino Bresciano and a range of corporate sponsors — local banks, banking foundations, marrone-producer consortia, large-scale food retail brands, dried-fruit distribution groups, confectionery houses — who intervene at different contribution levels and who wish to be present at the festival with their own merchandising that is consistent with their image while respecting the chestnut-growing tradition of the event. For teams pairing the Sagra del Castagno di Marone with the Brescian autumn calendar (Festa della Franciacorta, Val Camonica fair, Bione del Gusto in Brescia) we replicate the logistics across the different weeks and set up a single annual supply contract with revisions per date.

Production and logistics toward Marone

Before production begins, lock the artwork, per-recipient quantities, packaging and the named reception point. The exact grower or sponsor headquarter finalises only against the current hospitality list close to the festival — the Valle del Cavallino trails are natural spaces and cannot be used as a parcel-reception address on the day. Marone's ZTL (limited traffic zone) and lakefront traffic restrictions condition courier access, and most teams combine a Marone or Iseo hotel or grower seat with pickup from the venue itself on the day of the festival. For teams running multiple growers in the same edition we replicate the logistics across two or three nodes, so that each contact finds its own lot within minutes of the workplace rather than travelling across the historic centre during the road closures.

For an event in Marone we usually propose a central Marone or Iseo hotel or grower headquarter as the primary delivery point, with optional second-leg delivery to a Brescia or Milan office if the sponsor prefers to take possession of the kit after the festival. B2B goods stay within Italy under standard CMR with packing list; for clients subject to CSRD (D.Lgs. 125/2024) we attach a Scope 3 CO₂e sheet per GHG Protocol on the Lombardy–Lombardy route, and on request we integrate the sheet with the data of the production districts involved. Cold-store logistics is not required for this event, but we regularly coordinate temperature-controlled deliveries for marrone producers joining the autumn dinners with their own tasting tables.

All Italian B2B orders are invoiced in EUR at the standard 22% VAT rate (with reduced 4%, 5% and 10% rates where applicable by product category) and routed through the Agenzia delle Entrate's Sistema di Interscambio (SdI) to the buyer's codice destinatario or PEC address. Corp-Merch.IT is a registered Italian VAT operator, listed on VIES for intra-EU operations, and handles reverse charge, split payment and pubblica-amministrazione self-invoicing under current Italian rules. For corporate clients subject to IFRS reporting we also produce an attachment with the valuation of inventory and equity contributions split between income statement and balance sheet.

Frequently asked questions