Vincenzo Girasoli
You’ve come a long way since 1913. Now that you are at the head, what about your business strategies?
I wouldn’t say “strategies”. I’ve maintained what was given to me by my father and it’s not simply an advertising jingle “Quality First”. It was my grandfather’s motto and having being around ever since I was a boy, I remember him and my father never transgressing this point. This belief has always rewarded us, keeping us up even during or after very bad times, such as right after the War. Even though our company’s keeping up with time’s technologies, it’s just new machinery, it will never afflict our artisanal approach. For example, the bottling is a handmade process. Our female employees put every single stick inside every single bottle, one by one. The fish is handmade bottled. We just moved our facilities from the old Pizzo’s bay to the area North of Pizzo, now we’ve been in Maierato since 1988. We underwent a technological evolution, got to bigger buildings, clearly.
It is worth noting that your involvement in sports as well as the ice-cream business has given quite some results.
Well, my involvement in sports was quite an accident, it happened 24 years ago. There were those friends of mine, they had a little team playing the C2 league and they asked me for a favor, to act as their sponsor. Little by little, by asking me for advice here and there, my involvement increased and the first successes were achieved. Our team was promoted to the C1 league, B2 and then B1 and finally, on 13 May 2004 we got promoted to the main League. By then they’d left me in full control of the team, because they didn’t have any more founds to invest into it. I just applied the same business model of my company to the sporting society. And we achieved satisfying results. Even sport will benefit from being structured as a proper business. Mind this, we pioneered the coming in Calabria of players; before, players would not come here, we conquered their reluctance.
In Calabria, one might wake up one day to find himself successful in something. What’s the secret, Mr. President? Is there an inspiring message we can spread?
There’s no secret. Thing just have to be done properly, one thing taken care of at the right time, being mindful of what one’s doing. First and foremost, love and passion for your job. One has to uphold those business model that apply to all parts of the system. The team doesn’t amount to only 12 players and two trainers, there’s the whole behind-the-curtain work too. Like housing the players and taking care that the foreigner ones have a car… and everything else, the venue, dealing with the administrations. You can’t run anything on a “I’ve just remembered I have to do this”-way, like they do from Rome southward, things have to be organized, scheduled.
The hardest thing when we got promoted to A2, was convincing the players to move to Calabria, they thought they would find themselves in a Third-World land. The first years especially, they had to be pampered to an excess, but there was no other choice in order to build the team. After that, those players started talking about how they’ve been treated here, they spread the word about the President and today players actually aspire to come here in Vibo, because they know they will be treated well, people are great and the sporting society has a very human approach.
At the moment, we have 300 children training with actual professionals, not with pre-school afternoon teachers. We don’t offer a drop-off for parents to gain one more hour away from their kids, that is something elementary schools do as extracurriculars. The kids who enroll here, they come to achieve results and parents themselves are often bewildered by this. We give them a mind-set that will be useful for ever.
As an example of this, let me tell you how these kids feel like being all part of a body. They wear the Callipo uniform just like the adults and they know they can’t misbehave on the streets anymore. I myself talk to them and explain that given the uniform they’re wearing, whatever bad action they might commit, it will damage us all, the whole Callipo society.
Of course, before enrolling, all kids are expected to undergo a medical examination. This is an additional cost, you see. It’s a wonderful business turned into a great passion.
In conclusion, things have to be thought, scheduled, organized. You can’t do something at the last second. My colleagues asked me the same question. The secret is scheduling. I am all over it. The secret is this, otherwise one cannot be expected to perform well in every activity: doing things at the last minute, one will find his hands tied, there will be no time to do all that needs to be done.
