Vincenzo Girasoli
Mr. Geremia, your company is almost one hundred year old. Can you tell us something about its story?
Of course. Well, it all began in the 1930s, when my grandma’s father – Pietro Tamburini – started working on paints he would sell to local artisans. In 1962 my grandma Alessandrina took care of renaming the company, from Pietro Tamburini & A into Colorificio San Marco S. p. A. the name still in use today.
Why discarding the family name?
Grandma was a deeply religious woman and Saint Mark is the saint patron of our city, Venice. Certainly grandma Alessandrina wasn’t only that, she was clever, ambitious and put her degree in Economy to the service of this company, to which she was utterly devoted and committed. We have to thank her for modernizing our productive process and the phases of research and development of new products.
In the 70’s it was my father’s turn, Mr. Federico Geremia. He was a pioneer, he pushed this company outside Italians borders: we started exporting in the East of Europe, France, but also in the Middle East. Today he’s the company’s President, General Manager and Sales Manager. Ours is a very tight-knit family, I’m particularly close to my sisters: Marta (Financial Director) and Maria Luce (Human Resources). But really, we work keeping in mind the principles on which the company was founded which means actually caring for our employees and our customers. Together with my sisters we innovated the company even more, we introduced more managerial positions and employed young people. We aim at accelerating our foreign acquisitions, have a steadier hold on the building tools business and generally expand our production.
What are the pros and cons of a family run company?
I would certainly say that we are “forced” to care even more for our co-workers which in our case are our relatives. This fact prompts us to focus on long-termed projects instead of short-termed ones because our working team isn’t composed by strangers that could leave us any minute. And this is undoubtedly positive.
On the other hand, the main disadvantage is that being a family run company, when it comes to money we all need to chip in, invest and re-invest our own savings.
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