The entrepreneurial adventure begins
I’m Pierantonio Sgambaro, President of Sgambaro Spa.
The company was born in 1947. My grandparents were millers and decided in ’47, the grandfather with his two sons, I talk about my father and uncle, at the time my father was nineteen, to start a new activity, to build a pasta factory and produce pasta. We talk about a very small artisan pasta factory, at the time a few hundred pounds a day, no more. An anecdote that my dad tells me is this, that they paid the first installment of the pasta factory with a second work of the grandfather, almost a hobby, with honey. Grandfather was a great beekeeper and that year he had the luck of having a big harvest of honey and managed to pay the first installment of the pasta factory with this super production.
For us the bee remains symbolic, symbolic in my memories as a child, at 2-3 years old I used to taste with my grandfather the honey that he produced, and as an adult I discovered that, that honey, was honey of sweet acacia, I still remember that taste.
The money to start
The funding to start this pasta factory is, more than anything else, family money, money acquired from the activity of millers and, as I said, the great fortune of my grandfather of having had an overproduction of honey that allowed him to pay the first installment without drawing from the family coffers.
Naturally, these companies, company means risking and I believe that the earnings from the sale of pasta were then reinvested in the payment of the next installments.
A negative and a positive event
If I think of an unpleasant negative event, I think more of a period in which we had to choose what to do, we are talking about the end of the year two thousand, 1998 – 99.
At the time the Sgambaro produced two lines of products, a more entry level and, therefore, more poor one, a product for discount, and another one which wanted to be a quality product. The moment was almost dramatic – what do we do, what do we do, do we choose quality and, therefore, little quantity or do we choose to enlarge with the low price and then work in copacker or for the discount store, then blow up the revenue? It was a dramatic moment because we did not know what the market would have asked in the future, though I followed what was an instinct, what was a dream, what was a desire to do good and so at the time we chose to cut, to take away, we are talking about billions in revenue, we reduced the revenue by 30-40%.
Fortunately, a good part of the staff was retiring and this did not create social problems inside the company. We reduced our revenue with great pain, but I can say that after many years, after many years the choice was winning because we focused on quality, we created a nice brand, recognized as high-end and today we are standing on our legs.
We work with satisfaction and at the end year we can say that we manage to pay our suppliers, ours farmers, our employees and something remains for the company to be able to grow and invest.
Doing business in Italy
The icon of Italy is pasta and pizza.
Therefore, producing pasta in Italy means having a plus also to export, of remarkable value. The pasta factory must remain in Italy if he wants to keep that logic, that sound, that value, that high value that Italy gives. Some Japanese guy, if he has to choose between a pasta produced in USA and one produced in Italy, he would definitely choose the pasta produced in Italy. We also have a whole know-how around us, I mean the ones who build the machines, who supply the packaging, the grain suppliers, the workers themselves that are impregnated with this world. Therefore, for us it is much easier to create an excellent product here in Italy.
The key traits of an entrepreneur
I think of me that even as a child, as a kid I used to follow my dad in the wheat fields, I followed him on his travels to the commodity exchange and so on. I felt some dreams in those moments, a desire of doing, of succeeding. So it’s not banal to say that an entrepreneur must be a dreamer, someone who looks ahead, who looks even higher than he can see, but above all he has to find out what’s behind a curve and behind the other.
The future for the new generations
When I think of a young man, what can he do: I believe that even a young man of average intelligence, but of great passion, of great will, can arrive where he wants. I noticed it with myself, I consider myself a person more than normal, but, with the sacrifice, with the passion and with, 10,000 hours minimum of hard work, they say, you get an optimal result, arrive where you wanted to arrive.
I imagine being a young man today who has to think of his future as an entrepreneur. The first thing I would do, I would travel, I would collect experiences abroad, I would move in various environments before actually deciding what to do.
Because I realize that the world outside, even from Italy, runs runs much faster than here. Therefore, perceiving where the market goes and perceiving what the people want and how certain countries are moving, could be a great experience, a great baggage, to bring back here in Italy innovation and business.
IP Crew
