If there is one who sleeps soundly this is it Pavlos Efmorfidis, known as Paul, a guy who couldn't be more optimistic and outgoing and founding president of Coco-Mat, a leading company in the bed and mattress sector, which opens its first store in Italy, in the center of Milan, on the occasion of the Furniture expo.
Paul sleeps well not only because his beds are a paradise for late risers, an entirely eco-sustainable and orthosomatic (and not orthopedic, they are keen to point out) excellence that can cost up to 4.000 euros for the complete bed with four layers that can be adapted to all needs of sleep and composed of 100% natural materials (96% recyclable) such as coconut fibre, natural rubber, cotton, seaweed (to provide iodine acustomers who suffer from asthma and breathing problems), horsehair, silk, linen, wood and goose down.
But also because, as the name suggests, this 50-year-old is all about cycling (a month ago he rode Amsterdam-Athens on two wheels: "a fantastic experience") and football (his 17-year-old son James has just signed with his great friend Johann Cruyff: "he is a left-handed playmaker, he trained in the Barça cantera") he is Greek and it was precisely in Greece that he founded his company in 1989, which remains one of the few virtuous cases of success on the Greek scene. And which therefore also makes its increasingly numerous customers and 220 Greek employees sleep peacefully (there are almost a thousand in total in the world) who, unlike many other compatriots, have not lost their jobs.
Yes, because it is above all in the disastrous motherland that the eccentric Paul has managed not only to survive but even to grow. In fact, it is natural to wonder how he managed Coco-Mat to make the record sales just in August 2012, in a country shaken by the recession which certainly is difficult to imagine one could commonly afford products of this range of quality and price.
Or again it is instinctive to wonder how it was possible that a business of this kind, which in the meantime has expanded throughout the world, from Korea to the USA via China and Dubai, but which continues to make Greece the core with 30 shops and the only production factory (only a small part, destined for the Asian market, was delocalized to China), has managed to grow steadily in these dramatic years for the European economy. What's more, surprise of surprises, making the best progress right in Greece, where from 2006 to 2011 the turnover rose by 70% from 10,9 to 17,8 million euros.
Also in the rest of Europe, after having opened in France, Germany, Belgium, Holland, Spain (there is a 3.000 square meter superstore in Barcelona) and now Italy, the turnover has almost doubled from 7,85 to 13 million, while in China from 2010 to 2011 it even dropped, settling however at very high figures from 30,7 to 30,4 million. “The secret – explains Efmorfidis with a confident and proud smile – was precisely to anticipate the crisis and invest abroad, as we did 10 years ago. We certainly felt it a bit too, but we reached one dimension that allowed us to resist and then even to conquer the market paradoxically precisely in Greece, where the others have instead started to close their doors”.
Coco-Mat has therefore benefited from the collapse of the competition, proposing a brand whose quality has been increasingly recognized internationally, with awards and certificates of respect for the environment at all levels. A real white fly, like the flamboyant shirt by Efmorfidis which also ventures two steps of sirtaki, offering unexpected Mediterranean atmospheres to the Northern European visitors to the Milanese Salone. Ecology, quality, jobs: Greece is still alive.
