This is not the first time that Fantini Cosmi has witnessed and taken part in the relaunch of the Italian economy. Franco Brambilla, Managing Director of the company Fantini Cosmi, a third-generation member of the family of the same name, told us all about it.
“As it was founded back in 1931, in almost 90 years of activity our company made it through challenging times: the Second World War and the difficult post-war years, the economic boom and then the various financial crises, especially the one of 2007-2009. While it is true that only the fittest survive, Fantini Cosmi has certainly demonstrated that its foundations are solid enough to withstand such events and come out stronger than ever.
Considering all this, and the fact that we have overcome so many challenging circumstances in the past – from when our plant was bombed during the Second World War to the fire in the 1950s and the crisis of the 1980s – today, we are hopeful and optimistic about this Phase 2. We will try to draw on everything that this experience has brought with it, both the negative and, above all, the positive aspects, therefore the ability to be resilient and to quickly adapt to an unexpected situation.
During this period, our company never closed. Unfortunately, it was one of the first companies to experience the effects of Covid-19 firsthand. Our headquarters in Caleppio di Settala are located only 30 kilometres from what was considered the first red zone in Italy. We realised that the situation was serious right from the beginning, so we started getting organised so that we could work remotely. Within a few days, and despite the fact that our company had only ever worked from its offices, we managed to provide our employees with the technology they needed to be able to work from home.
With regard to production at our plant, we have worked towards ensuring everyone’s safety, by keeping distances, re-organising shifts and using thermal scanners, hand sanitiser gels and face masks.
Our first and primary goal was to make sure that all our employees were able to work safely, especially our factory workers, who could not work remotely. We would like to say thank you to them for their professionalism, resilience and dedication over the last few weeks.
This emergency situation made it possible for us to develop and improve certain aspects, first and foremost our ability to communicate with the outside world. We participated as speakers in a number of webinars to launch our new products, including our new Installers Academy Programme. We have been busy creating video tutorials on our products and encouraged operational meetings through video conferences, saving time and, most importantly, trying to be close to our customers, agents, installers and wholesalers and supporting them. It is safe to say that some positive things have come out of this unexpected and rather unfortunate situation: we have implemented initiatives and means of communication that we expect will continue to be useful in the future.
Our challenge now is to try to help the entire industry to get back on its feet quickly and make up for the ground lost over the last two months. We are ready”.
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