Marco Boglione and Adriano Moraglio
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People on the Move Marco Boglione and Adriano Moraglio Slowly please, I’m in a hurry Entrepreneur is cool! Basic Edizioni All rights reserved © 2009 Marco Boglione and Adriano Moraglio, Torino Original title «Piano piano che ho fretta» Printed in Torino, Italy Release 1.1.1 English translation by Daniel Monti ISBN 978-88-905499-1-5 To our children FOREWORD A corrispondence A friendship Marco and I have known each other for some time. I started to take an interest in him as a journalist when he was filling institutional posts, to be precise from the time he became president of Film Commission and later took up the same post for ITP (Investment in Turin and Pied- mont), the Agency devoted at the time to attracting foreign investors to Piedmont. When I met him I liked him immediately. Moreover it was clear that he had decided to offer his experience as an entrepreneur to a public body for a set period without seeking any profit whatsoever, profit being the purpose of any entrepreneurial venture. In spring 2008 I fancied a chat with him again so I set up a meeting. I did not have to interview him for my newspaper or gather information on his group, BasicNet, owner of the famous Kappa, Robe di Kappa, Jesus Jeans, Superga, K-Way brands. The last time I had seen him it had been at a jazz evening I had organized: he attended with his “wife” Stella (I’ll explain the meaning of the in- verted commas later). I told him I loved pizza and he invited me to that extraordinary pizzeria known as Fratelli La Cozza, behind BasicNet’s headquarters in Torino, under the very roof that saw the dawn of local industrial activity in 1916, when Abramo Vitale – a second name that will play a fundamental part in Marco Boglione’s existence – established Società Anonima Calzificio Torinese. We sat at a table on the balcony in the pizzeria’s huge open space, dined and talked at length. 7 SLOWLY PLEASE , I’M IN A HURRY After a time I felt the need to resume that conversation. No need to say that we did so in front of a pizza at Fratelli La Cozza’s. It was there that Marco told me that at the next board meeting he would put forward an unusual proposition that I thought was extraordinary. He said things were going well and that to mark BasicNet’s 25 years in business, although it started as Football Sport Merchandise, he would have liked to give all the group’s employees a bonus, a month’s extra pay and added he would put forward approximately one million euros. After careful evaluation of the significance of that decision I realized the man facing me had a completely new, or rather quite revo- lutionary concept of his activity as an entrepreneur. He said: «We went through difficult years, also as far as the mood went, everyone grinned and bore it and nobody complained; now things are going much better and it looks like the worst is over; the top management and shareholders are a lot more comfortable. It would be a real shame if BasicNet was a company where when it is time to cry everyone cries and when it is time to laugh only a few do so». As we dined I pitched the idea of writing his story. He did not say yes but said he liked me and that he would consider it. So here I am now, waiting for him in his boardroom, a strange but elegant room, with microphones screwed into the ceiling instead of resting on the table top. Resting on other tables along the walls are picture books, bottles of mineral water, military statues from China, three-colour Superga plimsolls (from toddler to adult sizes). On a wall there are three huge photographs: the beautiful woman’s bottom in denim hot pants that caused a scandal in the 70s making the Jesus Jeans brand famous; Moreno Torricelli wearing a tracksuit sporting the Kappa logo; between these two the third shows a man and a woman locked in a sensual embrace, an image from a 70s Kappa campaign. The room opens on the inner yard of the BasicNet village with its outlet, gigaStore, supermarket, a bar with its walls covered in old photographs of Maglificio Calzificio Torinese’s factory, a Superga outlet, a Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena branch, a laundrette, a travel agent’s, a multistore car park and, of course, Fratelli La Cozza’s pizzeria. The yard also leads to the main entrance to this 8 A FRIENDSHIP mini mall with an old sentry box on corso Regio Parco. I wait: I entered the building from the main entrance on a square named after Boglione’s great master Maurizio Vitale. Marco opens the door from his office and after greeting me with his usual warmth he sits at the table and starts telling me about himself. This happened repeatedly over a period of time. I wrote down pages and pages taking notes, mostly without talking, putting everything together later but keeping faithful to what I had heard. That’s what a reporter does: the chosen character should do the talking, not the reporter… Marco later went over the story, adding to it, correcting and rewrit- ing it with the precious help of his irreplaceable secretary Roberta. Finally I went over the story again, including my own words. So here is the result of our meetings and of all this work. With friendship. 9 PART I What we care about The trail When I was a child for a while I dreamed about becoming the President of the U.S. I was five or six years old and was besotted by John Fitzgerald Kennedy and all his family. I told myself: «That’s what I’ll do when I grow up». But when I was around ten I heard on the news that Henry Kissinger (who was at the time National Security Advisor and among the most powerful politicians in the world) would never be President of the USA because he had been born in Ger- many. Thus, I realized I had to abandon my plan: there was nothing for it, not a chance in the world. I immediately changed aspiration and went for Formula 1 pilot, but had to abandon this project too. In those days pilots were often victims of fatal accidents and it was exactly at that time that I lost two of my heroes – Jim Clark and Lorenzo Ban- dini –, but that was not the reason why I had to give up. The fact is I soon realized you could be successful only if you had a sponsor or your family was already in the trade. That was not my case, but for a long time I continued in secret to pretend I was a Formula 1 pilot, especially when driving. Soon I came to think I could become an entrepreneur. But the idea came and went. My family was sympathetic to- wards my projects; but obviously I was not taken seriously. 11 SLOWLY PLEASE , I’M IN A HURRY For a while I focused on another great passion of mine exciting my imagination, photography; at the same time I was busy getting through my education, and not without problems, thanks to my creativity and lust for life, to the point that half way through college I asked to be put into boarding school. At the Istituto Filippin in Paderno del Grappa, far from home, I met one of those good teachers who make a dif- ference in life. The suggestion, clear cut and without ap- peal was: «Do your duty here so you may in later life do all the things you believe in». But this is a tale that deserves to be told properly. In the meantime I have to say that at one stage, after col- lege, I was about to give up. That’s right, Adriano, I almost did. That is, I was about to ignore my dreams. I followed my family’s advice and enrolled in University to study the subject which least reflected my aptitude and expectations: Engineering. So I would never be a photographer nor a doctor, my latest ruse to avoid studying to be a naval engi- neer, my father’s ambition. Luckily I soon managed to es- cape that daunting nightmare that drove me to feeling I was no use to anyone, including myself, a state of mind I hate. That was maybe the saddest year and a half of my life. Fortunately it was then that I met Maurizio Vitale. From that moment on I would live ten extraordinary years, full of enthusiasm, passion and cheer in the company the a mar- vellous person and entrepreneur like Maurizio was. Now, after ups and downs, like the captain of a ship stopping in a harbour just long enough for maintenance and supplies, sailing from one shore to the next, here I am. Maybe just half way through my first trip around the world. Hoping and wishing I may travel many more miles, my spirit inside me urging me to get out there and travel more, facing further uncertainty. With a statistically high chance of being, in the end, swallowed by the waves, sud- 12 THE TRAIL denly losing everything I have earned in my first fifty years and that, like many people keep reminding me, I have ev- ery right of enjoying by taking less risks. I want to understand what has happened up to now.