Agordo

"I produce the semi-finished goods necessary to make the glasses, why give this competitive advantage to the final assembler, if I can do everything in-house with the possibility of presenting a quality product at competitive prices? Why allow others to benefit from my expertise, if we can do everything ourselves here in Agordo? The answer is self-evident and it's called manufacturing of the finished product. And to his glasses, Leonardo wants to put his own brand: Luxottica."

"At Metalflex, they start to worry, "the foreigner" from Agordo has reached business sizes now similar to those of the parent company, whose secrets and limits he knows all too well."

"He is offered the chance to return to his homeland and work in Agordo, in a factory of "injected and metal eyeglasses; to be a mold maker for complete injection frames, cutting tools, cold molds, and bending molds; to be the foreman to seven workers, one of whom is specialized," reads the original document."

"His beloved Inter, owned by the Chinese group Suning, owned by Zhang Jindong, is going through a rough patch. The pandemic has devastated the business of football, stadium revenues have disappeared, and the already notoriously shaky balances have turned deep red. The Nerazzurri have obvious cash problems, just in the year when they return to win the championship after over a decade. The company hasn't paid wages for months, and losses exceed 100 million euros per season. Zhang is desperately looking for a buyer, but he demands evaluations not in line with the revenues of the Milanese team. A tasty morsel for bankers who start knocking on the doors of the major investors in town. They also make it to Del Vecchio's office, hoping to breach his Nerazzurri football faith, as revealed by press rumors. After all, when he was young, he had been president and founder of the Agordo football team. No dice, Leonardo is loyal to the line. He has too much respect for money and for the effort it takes to earn it to get lured into the football business, one of those where it's easy to spend hundreds of millions of euros to please one's ego."

"The Crotta from whom the villa takes its name was a Lombard who arrived in town in the Sixteenth century from Laorca, the most northern of the districts of Lecco, with abundant riches and a certain baggage of mining experiences and knowledge acquired in German lands, as told by Raffaello Vergani, professor of Economic and Social History at the University of Padua. In Agordo he managed to establish himself, gaining prestige and recognition also from the authorities of Belluno and Venice, hence the construction of the Venetian villa in the center of the village. His great innovation was the use of gunpowder for the extraction of ore. A power."

"He sleeps there every time he returns to Agordo, since the late nineties his home has been in Milan, his second home is on the French Riviera, while vacations are spent in Antigua."

"Leonardo then sends a trusted Agordo collaborator to Texas, directly to the factory. It's August, while the boss is on vacation he asks the manager to call him every day and tell him how many "pieces" they have produced to get a clear idea of how much needs to change. On the first day, practically none, then a dozen, then even less. Every day there's something wrong, machines break down, unskilled workers, lack of competence and knowledge. The decision is immediate. Let's bring everything home, let's make them in Agordo. Luxottica closes all the group's factories, lays off the workers – there are about 3,500 – and sends to Italy what they can recover."

"In the months of fear during the pandemic, when he was confined to his buen retiro on the French Riviera, he did so by videoconference, but always with the new frames in hand, brought directly from Agordo by a trusted driver. A relay between the Dolomites and the sea to make the Tuesday meetings less virtual. Leonardo never gives up, never."

"If everything inside has remained unchanged, outside the Luxottica world has grown immensely. The house, a symbol of his definitive landing into the big bourgeoisie, is located right at the entrance of the mega-factory in Agordo, what in the company is called "the blue sea," from the color of the paint it was painted, a shade that over the years has become a sort of social color. Little marketing and a lot of substance even in that choice, explains to me the associate Luigi Francavilla, amused. "I liked blue because it was the color of the large factory where I worked in Switzerland before coming here." When the painter arrived, he had a can of paint in that shade. He swiped two brushstrokes. They watched him. Del Vecchio said, "It's fine." No soul searching or team meetings to choose the right shade to represent the values of the group. There was simply the need to paint the first shed."

""I arrived in Agordo as a subcontractor, that is, as a supplier of parts to all the eyewear companies," he says. "I moved there. I loaded a truck with machines, I dismantled the workshop, I laid off those five or six employees I had, and I left." He is not even slightly aware that he is about to change the history of Italian industry. He is only thinking about improving his own economic and social condition, about developing the artisanal workshop, about building something of his own. He sets no limits for himself, nor immediate goals. He thinks about growing, that is enough, and that was exactly the opportunity he was looking for. Sure, you really have to want to go to Agordo, you don't end up there by accident."

"He misses nothing, woe to try to hide any problem or underestimate it, because "the boss" – as they call him in code in Agordo, as always – will notice it at the first check."

"Having crossed the Cibiana and Duran passes, you arrive in Agordo, a town that was almost ghostlike sixty years ago, struck by the scourge of emigration for lack of prospects after the closure of the mines, and that in 2021 represents a small gem of excellence. Agordo hosts over four thousand workers in its factory: double-decker buses shuttle to bring them to the factory from all over the province of Belluno, and at shift change, it seems like you are at Oxford Circus."

"At Metalflex, they start to worry, "the foreigner" from Agordo has reached business sizes now similar to those of the parent company, whose secrets and limits he knows all too well. And he is very, overly enterprising. He is not satisfied with a slice of the market, he wants everything. It’s clear they no longer trust each other."

"His approach to the area of Belluno during those months happens gradually. It is said that, before setting up the factory in Agordo, he worked for a few months at the Metalflex headquarters in Venas, in Cadore. They had him do everything, from delivering parcels to customers at the post office to receiving sales and purchase documents. Months of apprenticeship that allowed the man from Milan to better understand the industry from inside one of the leading factories. He didn't miss the opportunity to learn from the best. Leonardo took note of everything: names, addresses, people. He studied every detail of the industrial activity, understood who the most promising customers were, which products were the most popular. Information that would prove useful a few years later, when he would set up his own business and compete directly with his former partners."