Liverino is supplied, too, from the vast reserves built up through the purchase of the stock of the Raffaele Costa firm, one of the hest known Genoese companies and active up to the Twenties. It consists mostly of material coming from the famed deposits of Sciacca, discovered around 1880 off the coast of Sicily: in a few years coral firms from Torre del Greco collected as much as eleven million kilo - a mountain of coral. "In those days as many as four hundred special boats were fitted up for thc collection of coral" states Basilio Liverino. They were capable of carrying four thousand people. A further eighty or so special boats called "martingale" were also prepared. These were designed to ply back and forth between Torre del Greco and Sciacca carrying food supplies on the outward trip and returning with the coral collected. Those were years marked by a tremendous growth of our economy and a profitable collaboration between ourselves and the Sicilians. Today, it's impossible to repeat with other Mediterranean people what was achieved towards the end of the last century." Basilio Liverino is current head of the firm in which his son and two daughters work: Vincenzo, head of sales in Italy and abroad; Maria Carmela, in charge of administration matters; and Elvira, on the work floor. Direct collaborators number over thirty (twenty workers), outside helpers number sixty comprising coral and cameo craftsmen and goldsmiths. Exports account for at least sixty percent of turnover and coral represents seventy percent of this volume, followed by twenty percent for cameos and ten for pearls imported from Japan and distributed exclusively on the domestic market. The company has three agents abroad (in Taiwan, in South Korea and in Japan) ancd three salesmen in Italy (continental South, Tuscany and Liguria, Emilia and Veneto, with Lombardy and Sicily served through wholesalers).