Entrepreneurs inside the crisis, beyond the crisis, with companies alive and growing despite everything, because the love for one's work moves mountains and also the GDP. The 18 stories collected by the journalist and writer Fabio Raffelli in his third volume dedicated to the "Brave Captains" of Emilia (the second, actually, was for "the captains") have a common denominator: the passion for the entrepreneurial profession, a dedication that from the fall leads to the resurrection of large and small realities. From Barilla to Cigaimpianti in Finale Emilia, these "captains" show how it is possible to lose everything, regain it and do better than before.
“The earthquake confined us to wooden containers – says Claudio Sabatini, owner of Cigaimpianti – but we have practically not lost a single day of work and today we are doing better than before. We assemble machines in the companies and now we also have seven teams available for the warehouses to bring up to standard, demand is very high and we are preparing other teams". Cigaimpianti is the other side of the earthquake, the one that, after the mourning and the fear, makes you breathe a sigh of relief, because from the rubble you can also restart and even put the turbo.
And among the many stories there are three particularly significant: that of the entrepreneur who, having hit rock bottom, sells the house, moves into the shed and gets off to a great start; that of a group of thirty-year-olds who dust off a historic brand of beer, Ronzani, and make it a cult product; that of a financial advisor who bets his money in Cesare Ragazzi. Everyone set up shop at the height of the crisis, everyone is struggling, but everyone is also winning, creating jobs and prospects. A nice lesson in the Italian New Deal.
“In 2001 – says Luciano Ranieri, founder of Eurotronik Studioerre – I lost everything, because my son, my only heir, my future died. The subsequent divorce also brought me to my knees from an economic point of view, but I managed to carry on with the search for the advanced tertiary sector until 2008, when a regional law cut our legs off. We do research and the Emilia-Romagna Region decided to take away our funding from the Ministry of Education, to allocate it exclusively to the university and to companies linked to the university. It was a very hard blow. Now what do I do? I asked myself. Simple: I'm selling my house, I'm going to live in the shed and I invest everything in ideas, I produce what we invent. We're doing well today." Ranieri, an electronic expert and never finished engineering studies, is the one who signed the Ferrari air conditioning system. “The first – he says – to have separated the temperature of the driver from that of the passenger”.
In short, his pedigree said that his ideas were good. When he gets into production he chooses the medical field. Today the Eurotronik Studioerre of Castel Maggiore has 16 employees, 14 graduates, almost all engineers and a fully automated production. There are three brands currently on the market: Divamed (plants for rehabilitation); Divabeauty (for aesthetics); Divapro (aids for the elderly). In 2011, the turnover reaches one million euros, while orders are growing: “at any moment we could increase volumes tenfold” he maintains. And in the meantime Ranieri accumulates prizes for his inventions, the last one in Salerno a few days ago, while last year the European Community crowned him Unknown Champion. The small company has an Italian and a foreign sales office, because internationalization is a necessity: "We are already in Germany and Czechoslovakia and we have advanced negotiations with the USA". In this picture only one big problem: the earthquake.
“We are suppliers of Gambro and Belco, in short, of the biomedical products of Mirandola and due to the delays in payments we risk a major liquidity crisis in September. Given our rating and prospects, we hope the banks will help us”.
Alberto Ronzani is not afraid of the crisis when, two years ago, he decides to resurrect a historic brand of beer of the same name, but not its "relative": Ronzani beer which was born and proliferated in Casalecchio di Reno from 1855 until 1970. Over a century of life, which ended with the closure of the factory and no trust in a brand that had marked the history of the town on the outskirts of Bologna. Ronzani begins to think about it for that same name which seems to be a sign of destiny: he discovers that the trademark is not registered, he researches the recipe and sets off, invests all his money in this adventure and finds two partners along the way: Marco Rossetti and Fabricius Procaccio. In 2009 the trademark was registered and on 26 June 2010 the first bottles began to appear. Alberto Ronzani also recovers graphics, cartoons, formats. He designs a bucket and a magnum and decides, he himself who comes from supply to large-scale distribution, to look for more elitist channels: wine bars and restaurants. The brand is immediately positioned at a high level. The first to believe it are the restaurateurs of the Romagna Riviera, then the Bolognese.
The "blonde" of Casalecchio, once prepared with water from the Reno river, is now produced in Monte Nerone, on the Umbrian-Marche border, with spring water and 11 different types of hops. In 2011, the bottles sold on the Italian market are already one hundred thousand, a good number for a kind of beer champagne, as also underlined by the advertising campaigns, where you sip a Ronzani on board a jet or on a yacht.
The break even is at 500 bottles, a goal that should be easier to reach thanks to overseas: "in a couple of years - says Ronazni - we are already in the best restaurants in New York, Formentera, Australia, France and Greece". The road to success should be facilitated by a network of 250 sellers and the idea that "luxury" (a Ronzani in a restaurant costs between 10 and 25 euros) is anti-cyclical. Made in Italy designers and high product quality are the ingredients of a story that seems to have started off on the right foot. “We believe in it – says Alberto Ronzani – and in a couple of years we count on reaching 500 bottles. Ours is a niche product, but people like it more and more, especially among young people, it's still a blonde, light and full-bodied at the same time".
Cesare Ragazzi of Zola Predosa was on the verge of bankruptcy when Andrea Mandel Mantello, a financial consultant, decided to bet on it. Mantello comes from UBS and in 97 he founded his own advisory and consulting company, AdviCorp, with which he sits on the boards of many important companies. The manager doesn't wear a toupee, but with his partner Marco Elser he comes up with the "wonderful idea" of taking over and relaunching Cesare Ragazzi, to bring back an innovative and unique technique for those with hair problems.
The departure is dated July 26, 2011: it takes a good deal of recklessness to embark on an entrepreneurial adventure when it is now clear that Europe is at the heart of the most serious economic and financial crisis of the last 80 years. However, Mantello believes in it and finds travel companions ready to work with him, such as Stefano Ospitali (formerly Cremonini) who is now the company's Chief Executive Officer. In one year, the group returns to a turnover of almost seven million euros and has about thirty franchised centres, plus the directly managed one in Bologna. Cesare Ragazzi, at the top, invoiced around 13 million and with the various centers it reached 40 million. That is the first objective that the new group has set itself.
“We intend to focus heavily on women – explains Ospitali – who today represent the potential 40% of our customers. Ours is a unique product of superior quality. Don't call it a wig or toupee, it's something else. It's called 'epithesis' and it changes about once a month, in less than an hour. Less than the time it takes a lady to get her hair dyed". The periodicity is more or less the same and the advantage that the "epithesis" offers compared to a normal wig is that it never comes off, not even at the beach or in the shower.
“We believe in the product because there is research and innovation behind it – underlines Ospitali – it is no coincidence that we collaborate with dermatologists, plastic surgeons and we are suppliers of the Inail prosthesis centre. Our commercial strategy, for now, is to strengthen ourselves in Italy, reopening two important centers such as Milan, in September, and Rome within the year. We will proceed with a series of openings also directly, to provide customers with widespread assistance. As far as foreign countries are concerned, we have established several contacts in Brazil, Germany and China. In fact, the internationalization of the product is one of our horizons”.
