The workers saved Happiness in 2021 — in 2026 the court saved it again

Happiness, the Rimini clothing brand known for screen-printed T-shirts with cheeky, irreverent slogans, went through its first death in February 2020: the Rimini court declared its operating company, Piccoli e Grandi, bankrupt — too many debts to honour privileged creditors, and about thirty employees left with the wreckage.

The brand's second life was its workers. In 2021 the former employees bought the name at auction and formed a cooperative, Happiness group, to run it. Five years later the cooperative was in difficulty again — and this time it reached early for Italy's new business-crisis toolkit: negotiated composition of the crisis, then a simplified concordato (concordato semplificato) financed from outside, with the members themselves putting money in for the benefit of creditors.

On 6 June 2026 the Rimini court authorised the plan. At least two formal, binding offers had arrived — not just for the trademark but for the whole business complex: structures, warehouses, assets. The bidders' identities stayed confidential; the cooperative's lawyer Massimo Gardini and advisors Enrico Montanari and Matteo Dal Monte framed the plan as protecting commercial value while satisfying creditors.

Two collapses in six years with a worker buyout in between: Happiness is a case about what a rescue actually costs. The first one was paid for by the old company's failure; the second one is being paid for by the workers' own contributions — and the name's future now belongs to whichever of the two offers the procedure lets through.