Egoitaliano, youth at the center. In conversation with Nino Scarcella

Actually, I made the call from the Salone del Mobile. I even recall the exact date: it was 23 April 2007. Back then I was working for a local company. I called Uncle Piero because I was tired of devoting so much time to others without receiving much consideration in return. Indeed, it’s common for companies in our region – the Murgia living room district – to focus more on exports than on the domestic market. All my life, I’d kept a close eye on the domestic market in Italy. I could see it offered great opportunities, so I thought I’d ask Uncle Piero to step out of his slippers (he had already retired) and jump back into the fray.

We certainly had no lack of experience: we’d worked twenty years together at a local firm, so it was easy enough to envisage embarking on this fantastic journey. We were keen to communicate and raise awareness about a sense of freedom at our company, something you see from the young people here. Egoitaliano is a container where everything is allowed, where the defining element is the value of Made in Italy.

Uncle Piero’s two children: Nancy, who sits on the Board of Directors, and Leo, who used to run his own graphic design company… he brought those skills with him when he joined. Rather than being here as family members per se, other family members cooperate and contribute their professional skills. Well aware of how much of an issue generational transitions can be for small- and medium-sized Italian companies, we’ve kept a wary eye on this.

For the last seven years, following guidelines in “Elite”, a Borsa Italiana scheme supported by Confindustria for training and mentoring companies along organizational and managerial development pathways, we’ve been “depersonalizing” the company. That includes addressing generational transition-related issues.

Making an idea a reality after a lifetime of being an employee, that’s a pretty major turning point. You have to continually reinvent yourself and your plans to move forward; you must be willing to question your beliefs. Situations change abruptly, and if you don’t have the skills to adapt your structure, you risk going from being a wonderful company to a company that’s no longer in business. Starting up during a downturn helped us be more open to change and innovation.

The most recent ones, what we’re putting out today. Because we’re a responsible, environmentally sustainable, caring company, we started up the Flip project to respond to the social and ethical impact the company necessarily has on the local area. To ensure we aren’t one of many producers feeding landfills, we decided to embark on a process of no longer selling but renting. At the end of the rental period, it’s up to the consumer whether to keep or return the item. If returned, our company commits to reuse recoverable materials, giving the product a new lease of life on the remanufactured market. We’re the first company in our industry to launch such a scheme – we offered a sneak preview at Salone del Mobile.Milano. It is the best response at this time. We’re committed to taking products back to our workshops, reusing them rather than throwing 100% of them away. We’re also strengthening our partnership with Matera Prison to manufacture reclaimed items under the Made in Carcere brand started up a few years ago.

We won’t be presenting many products, more refining what we’ve already unveiled in versions with new coatings. 

Egolab is a meeting place for young designers from all over the world, an area dedicated to the new: new inspirations, provocations, a laboratory of ideas that will be channelled into our Academy, where we train people with manual and creative skills. We’re keen to surround ourselves with young people: they nourish the non-ordinary. To ensure that we’re still here tomorrow, we need what only they can accomplish. 

Tough times require more cautiously assessing our objectives to safeguard the company. We must be responsible, yet we must also follow a natural path and stay alert to sudden shifts. In the near future, we may be paying for the benefits our industry recently enjoyed... With interest. After two splendid years of figures, it’s time to step back and reorganize our plans and activities to match the new reality.