Business School: the second half of Trading with...Italy

Importing from Italy: in this article I will be not talking about statistics or brands to sell as Lavazza, Armani, Ferrari, Barilla, Martini, Ferragamo, etc. My wish is to be talking about Italian emotions. My professor Emilio Segre told me: Vittorio you've to remember that the sum of two plus two is not always four, somethimes three, somethimes five. Life is not just numbers and Cartesian axes. "Tell me the story, some histories of your company" many new customers all over the world have repeatedly asked me this request. If I was the director of new company without a story, they looked at me perplexed. "You are offering me Italy, the Bel Paese, and you do not have the story? So we can not buy an Italian product without history. Sorry!" My dear Exporter if you want be able and nice selling something abroad you have just to bring the story of everything you are talking about. The second thing you have to put into your work as an exporter is the heart, the passion. If you are descripting your catalogue without enthusiasm it means that your product is made without enthusiasm. Today I wrote a comment to Gianmario Verona, rector of Bocconi University, telling him that the sum of two plus two is not always four. I hope my thoughts are clear now. We need to talk about the place of production, the sun, the water, the ideas that are numerous and why only a few will become an item for the market. After talking about the history of the factory with passion we can talk about some person who are working in the production sector or in another department. Maria is making this, Gianni is doing this other one. In a few minutes the potential buyer understands that you are not offering him a product and a price, he understands that you are talking about a project. He understands that you want him to come into your family for a job project and a life project. Yes, a life project because of many entrepreneurs dedicating more time to his work than to his family&home. So work is a very important part of his family. I have been the director of many companies making area restyling projects or food, wine, fashions, parfums or just entrepreneurial development projects. I designed new brands and modernized old stories full of feelings. Balsamic vinegar, the dress of a famous fashion house, pasta, wine, biscuits, limoncello and ancient liqueurs, honey, ready sauces, natural flavors and many other artisan and industrial products. The artisan tries to make the perfect product, the industrialist tries to make the product with some imperfection to make it look like a handmade product. All Italians fight for a slice of the foreign market bringing Italy into the world thanks to the millions of emigrants left for very distant nations. The sweat, the humiliations, the privations, having many dollars and feeling like a poor person without their own people. Years and years of diffusion of Italian good living with music, poetry, food, shoes, clothes. The desire to understand what the stranger is saying. The desire to make the stranger understand what you are saying. Learn from the stranger, teach the stranger. Today the kitchen cabinets and wardrobes are full of Italian products. But they are full of fake Italian products too. The jackals of some nations sell their bad products to the gullible by putting Italian words and names. They change just little difference of a famous Italian brand keeping the same lay out so to deceive the buyer. They write many times "ITALIAN STYLE" with very large characters and very small characters "produced in Turkey, Germany, India, Tunisia, Spain, etc". But is this behavior correct or is it unfair? I love Turkey, Germany, India, Tunisia, Spain and other nations of the world. Every nation has very nice people and things. Why should the producers of these nations exploit Italian suffering and creativity like jackals selling tons of fake Italian items.