Having been priviledged to stand on the stages of universities, institutes, events and companies worldwide in order to share the knowledge, experience and advice I've accumulated over the years. Not one to typically shout out on social media or stand on a pedestal, but in any person's career there comes a time where standout mentors, leaders and luminaries who have helped shape my character need to be singled out and thanked. I wouldn't have reached the plateaus and milestones without them. They remain in my mind. And now is the time for each of them to receive their "silent" accolades, my sincere thanks and gratitude for their behind-the-scenes sacrifice of time and energy in helping me strive for my next step in life.
When I first arrived in Italy from Texas in May of 1992, thinking boisterously to advise Italian and European companies on how to do business in the USA. I had studied French in France, German in Germany, right? I was ready to conquer and unite two continents. Nonetheless, I had zero network, little market experience (yes, I spoke Italian fluently) and of course, zero reputation or credibility. My first mentor in Management Consulting was Pietro De Carolis of UBM Consulting and later Mercer Management Consulting in Milan. At his posh Galleria Passerella offices, he took me under his wing and gave me a chance, providing a platform upon which I could learn about Italian industrialisation, project management and pan-European market research. Together with the Munich offices, we stitched together business development projects for companies looking to enter new business segments. The EU Community had just been established and it was going to compete with the biggest market of them all, the USA. But how little did I know the deep complexities in culture, language and market dynamics from the different countries. I had a lot to learn before giving out any advise. Yet these consulting experiences all provided me the foundation of a structured approach for manufacturing companies to enter new industries, markets and acquire new customers. It was a new beginning, a new way of doing busines.
Fall 1994. Living and working in the center of Milan, I became engulfed by the Italian passion of creating and making excellent products. Food, Fashion, Furniture and further south, Automobiles, were the backdrop to nearly everything I saw. Flashy store windows down Montenapoleone, mass market retailers down Corso Vittorio Emanuele, Martini, Fernet, Luxottica, Gucci, Armani. Very nice, but I needed steady income if I were to stay in this town. My personal mba project to Europe was on the brink of failure (at 30 years old you've got to be fully independent) and returning to the States with my head in the clouds. At that juncture, my best friend Paolo Bergmann advised me: "why don't you send out 20 cv's where you'd like to work and see what happens." And so I did (at the time email did not exist, so I sent them by fax). Up until that time, I had been an undercover journalist for Sporting Goods Dealer Magazine in New York, which allowed me to enter for free into the top sports trade shows across Europe, like MIAS in Milan and ISPO in Munich. Taking night trains to Munich station, the metro to the fairgrounds, the get togethers with NSGA (US National Sporting Goods Association). Seeing Nike and Adidas competing head to head in the German market. Benetton Sportsystem. Lotto. And many more. Sports were part of my life. I was an NCAA Division I basketball player at Texas Tech University, played a high level of tennis, loved baseball and even played rugby at the collegiate level. Sports teach us discipline and teamwork in order to reach an objective: to win. Right away I get two invitations to interview for a job, a real job. Life can quickly change if you just ask for it to do so.
Never would I have thought to work with bicycles! Up to that time Schwinn and banana seats were my only exposure, aside from my childhood summers reading the occasional pink coloured Gazzetta dello Sport. Felice Gimondi, Francesco Moser, Eddy Merckx, Gianni Bugno. Names that caught the headlines. My first business mentor was Amedeo Colombo, founder of MIC (Legnano, MI), who for 30 years was the importer of Shimano brand cycling products in Italy, the proud sponsor of the Varese ice hockey team and later organizer of the 2008 UCI world championships. Amedeo took a risk in hiring me and taught me the work hard, play hard philosophy under his entrepreneurial spirit. But he was a risk taker in person. Everything he earned, he invested back in the company into new ventures, from flowers, to food, to cycling, a new warehouse, to clothing, to in-line skates. I started out by coordinating the production of road cycling shoes in Montebelluna (TV), in the sports shoe manufacturing district north of Venice (where Nordica started), while coordinating the sales of cycling footwear and clothing throughout Italy. From Bolzano to Palermo I visited every top bike shop and dealer across the country, learning about their craft (and being directed towards the best restaurants in the area). Special thanks goes to Paul Frowijn of Shimano Europe in Nunspeet, Holland for his guidance and leadership at the European headquarter level. Paul organized many sales meetings and presentations, from Morocco to Garmisch to Schladming, including the introduction of Shimano snowboarding step-in bindings and boots made by Shimano Korea, together with the collaboration of K2 and Northwave companies. Snowboarding in the steep and deep became another one of my sport passions.
Fast forward to the Summer of 2000. My desire to work in fashion at an international level, brought me to the next phase of my career: Gas Jeans in Chiuppano, north of Vicenza. Just a stone's throw from where my father once spent his summers in Caltrano, I turned 360 degrees back in life and began to understand my roots, where my family came from, about gnocchi and polenta and hard work. Special thanks goes to Vito Rotondi for believing in my marketing abilities and founder Claudio Grotto for teaching me the world of fashion and allowing for me to promote his products around the world. This appreciation and understanding of the fashion supply chain, led me into a more long-term approach to business relationships, better known as Licensing. Under the guidance of Vito, I worked to help the GAS brand enter new product segments (beauty, footwear, beachwear, eyewear) and find new customers through Partnerships, while coordinating team meetings together with the Creative, Sales, Marketing, IT and Logistics departments. Even though I later got laid off from GAS as a part of a corporate restructuring, this hands-on experience in Sales, Communication, Marketing and Brand Management was fundamental to my understanding of Long-Term Partnerships in Fashion Brand Building. And I will never forget this, nor the mixed emotions left somewhere along the road between Chiuppano and Milan.
Down and out in the hills. September 2008. Unemployed, divorced from my first wife, at a crossroads, but still with high hopes. What do I do? Remain in the mountains or head back to the city? Start flipping burgers or pull up my sleeves? Luckily the Italian government did not forget about me. I later learned that if I opened my own VAT number (uh oh, and later paid lots of taxes), the government would provide me my full compensation in advance, to invest in my own company. At that time I asked myself: "who am I? what do I want to do?" Fortunately, again, I started to travel (always an excellent investmenet and source of knowledge at any point in one's career) and deeply study the Luxury sector. Luxury is the utmost attempt at expressing the soul of a company. Making something by hand, of your own creation, in your own factory and sold in your own store, personalised by your own employees is the ultimate tool towards receiving this status and recognition. Respect. That's what I wanted to see and learn, with my own eyes and hands. I remember during a trip to Paris, stopping by the WH Smith bookstore on the Rue de Rivoli and purchasing my first book called Luxury Brand Management: A World of Priviledge by Michel Chevalier and Gerald Mazzalovo. This book had a big impact on my understanding of the Luxury business, providing me a basis on the complexity, challenge and responsibility of being a true luxury brand in the long term.
January 2009. My most important mentor, Prof. Romano Cappellari, suggests that I should think about bringing my experience into the classroom at CUOA Business School and later the University of Padova. ME? An academic? I'm all about making money and profits! What could I possibly provide to students? Why would I want to sacrifice my time and money to invest in students? Romano must have seen something in me that others missed. Patience, understanding, open-mindedness, international scope, professionalism (and yes, love and a passion), while at the same time having actually worked inside real companies, with real people, with real markets. Not your typical teacher with three degrees and a PHD (I do have a BBA in Marketing and a minor in French from Texas Tech University, though), but a marketing man who knew how to communicate well in English. What better example for local business students? Real business examples presented in an understandable business language (no macaroni english, but wall street savvy) with a complex, yet international mindset. Done! I said yes to Romano, of course! Then and there I started a new career in Education, preparing lessons, never showing up late, never missing a class, rain or shine!
I recalled having been the person at GAS who was in charge of corporate visits, entertaining international clients, translating for sponsored athletes and your basic tour guide of the headquarters who gave a cool impression of the company. Even when student groups from local universities would visit GAS, it was up to me to give them an overall corporate presentation (obviously prepared and pieced together by me), a tour of our in-house flagship store, visits to the Creative Room and finally a coffee break or brunch at our third floor canteen overlooking the valley below. Simple! In the classroom I would just have to repeat the same case study on the Gas brand, talk about Marketing, Communication and Licensing, spice it up with store openings in Spain, Germany, UK and China, then add some pictures. Why not, the stage was mine and nobody ever questioned my approach or content. A dream world! No Harvard method, no assessments, just sink or swim. Fully trusting my method and preparation. Go for it.
It was then and there that Marketing (the four P's), a short-term concept, was simply not enough to make a company profitable. Where were the People? Where was social media, social animals, social disruption? To be Discount, Mass, Premium or Luxury. What's your Positioning? How to get there? The more long-term approach, the concept of Brand Management took on a greater importance and became imperative to me (and ultimately to a generation of mba students around the world!). There is a whole world of long-term growth and Business Partnerships to present, for a company's survival. Not only in Fashion, but also in the utmost form of product or service expression: Luxury. Imagine that. A company making the most original product that exists, hand made, and doing it over and over in the long-term. To put food on the table for employees. That's when I made my second most important book purchase, once again in Paris at WH Smith: Strategic Brand Management by Jean Noel Kapferer, the guru of Brand Management. That book changed my life forever. Easy to read, clear, understandable and incredibly strategic. I tell all my students to read it, because still to this day I refer to its content. Merci JNK!
Stay tuned for Part II (Back to Milan)
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