Ferrero

"At this point, however, something unexpected happens. From that isolated factory, impossible to reach for rescue teams, the workers do not want to leave. Many of them rush from their homes despite the threats. And together with Pietro and Giovanni, they start shoveling the mud to save the valuable machinery. The two brothers devote themselves to working with the workers non-stop for four days and four nights. "Fieui, fomie vedde noiaotri," let's show them, Mr. Pietro encourages everyone in Piedmontese dialect. "Let's get to work without waiting for help that might never come... I can almost hear the competition: look, Ferrero is down! We have to show that we are not down. Let's also get down to work. We have to pick up the company and bring it back to life, better and stronger than before." They keep the three daily eight-hour shifts, as during normal production. But some teams work up to sixteen hours straight, amidst imaginable discomforts: eating bread and salami in the morning and also in the evening, and drinking a glass of wine. A proof of self-denial and dedication that rewards the Ferrero family for so much bitterness."

"He considered the air he breathed on the paths of the Langhe so beneficial that, to the surprise of planners and architects, he had it reproduced inside his offices. For example, in Brussels, Beppe Veglio, former general manager of the Ferrero factory in the Belgian town of Arlon, in the southern Ardennes, recalls that Michele "had an office built in a small building that exactly replicated the characteristics of the air of the Langhe at about six hundred meters in altitude." Confirms Gianni Mercorella, with nearly fifty years of service at Ferrero as the custodian of the product cards, since 1990 part of his secretariat: "When I accompanied him to identify the place to establish the Balvano factory, in my earthquake-shaken Basilicata, with neighboring Irpinia, from the earthquake of 1980, Mr. Michele chose an altitude and air that were similar to those of his Langhe." As Ferrero researcher Gianlorenzo Seletto states, "at that altitude, bread leavening is ideal." And this is an additional factor in achieving that unique excellence of the products."

"Nutella contributes to the unstoppable growth of Ferrero in Europe. Other factories and commercial offices open in the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. There's an anecdote that alone could tell the success of the new product, without resorting to what we now call market research: the 'spalloni', smugglers who come from Switzerland to Italy loaded with American cigarettes and with some watches, on the return carry in their robust backpacks loads of Nutella and other Ferrero products. Especially in Switzerland, one of the historical homelands of chocolate."

"The most authentic account of that invention comes years later from Michele, already a successful industrialist, in a beautiful interview given to Alfredo Pigna of the Domenica del Corriere, where his father's invention cream is called 'pastone'. "Do you know what pastone is? Some call it the chocolate of the poor, but I would say it's the sweet of the humble... My father Pietro invented pastone, a kind of gianduiotto, which was very good and inexpensive. My father and also my uncle Giovanni, who was his partner, thought that our best customers, customers for a sweet, would become those thousands of workers, bricklayers, carpenters, farmers who at breakfast time used to buy some tomatoes and a bit of cheese to put in the middle of a loaf of bread. And if – my father and uncle thought – we give them the opportunity to have a snack with a sweet that costs the same, or even less than what they bought before? They were right. It was an overwhelming success that we still cannot fully understand today. On that pastone, Ferrero was born."

"Pietro, the more restless of the two, invested his savings to open the Ferrero Café and Pastry shop under the arcades of Via Corte, in the historic center. An insistent idea occupies a large part of his mind: to drastically reduce the cost of chocolate. "If I can make chocolate that costs half or a third of what one pays in shops," he says confidently, "if I can sell for a few lire a substantial piece of chocolate, today reserved for a few rich people and a few days of major festivities like Easter and Christmas, I will make it a product that is pleasing to all palates and within reach of all wallets, I will make it popular, people will fight in front of my pastry shop just to get it. I will conquer the market of children, I will ensure their snack, at four in the afternoon I will have them lined up clamoring at the doors of the Café Pastry.""

"Initially, he gets his hands on them himself. Moreno Cavalli, a chemical expert, says: “Mr. Michele was a man who strongly combined the knowledge of raw materials with the knowledge of machines. He did not buy a machine to use it as it was designed. He disassembled it, added other parts, and built a complex Ferrero machine. Many of the machines that are still there now had been adapted years ago. And he wanted all of us to know well the machines that were in action in the factory.” This passion is evident from his own words: "What do you want, I've always been particularly fascinated by machinery. When I see it moving, it seems to me that it has a soul, like a person. If you've been to the Alba plant you will have noticed that kind of automatic milking machine that fills the little plastic boxes with spreadable chocolate. It closes them, seals them, packs them to be shipped… well, that machine turns out twenty-two thousand boxes like that every hour. Isn't it a wonder?""

"In 1982, Michele Ferrero launched what is today the world's best-selling chocolate: the Ferrero Rocher. To name this praline (he calls it a "little pastry"), wrapped in a pharaonic golden foil and advertised with the famous commercial featuring the chauffeur Ambrogio and the noblewoman craving something tasty, Ferrero didn't rely on any brainstorming sessions. He found the name himself, taking it from the Roc de Massabielle, the cave at Lourdes where the Virgin Mary appeared to the shepherdess Bernadette, a destination for both personal and company pilgrimages. The spherical shape of the fine chocolate reflects the shape of the cave: it is the hazelnut pieces that cover the shell, along with the milk chocolate coating that envelops the toasted hazelnut, that recall the protrusions of the rock. Michele himself is the creator of the complicated machine that produces the Rocher. Moreno Cavalli, a former chemical expert at Ferrero, says, "The robot was the result of a long transformation achieved with his favorite technique: Mr. Michele did not buy a machine and use it as it was, but he would add a piece here and a piece there until he achieved the desired purpose. For this reason, he invited us, the employees, to go look at machines displayed at fairs and markets to see if we could identify new components for Ferrero. 'And when a visitor enters the factory, never leave them alone in front of the machines, they could copy them,' was his recommendation.""

"Between Grande Stevens, who would not coincidentally become the lawyer for the main Italian industrial groups, and Michele Ferrero, there was a complete understanding. "He told me one of his secrets for the fine-tuning of products," remembers the lawyer. "He had found a supermarket in Luxembourg that agreed to put his new products on the shelf without the Ferrero brand. Some agents would wait outside and intercept the ladies who had bought those chocolates, offering them compensation to be interviewed. They would go to the offices and Michele, who was listening attentively from behind a wall, would suggest the right questions to the interviewers." And so, incognito, he understood why his new products were liked or not by the customers. Ferrero himself loves to enter supermarkets and try all the products that intrigue him or whose competition he fears. He wants to see them in person, touch them, taste them. In these raids, according to company legends, he is accompanied by an attendant who collects the wrappers of the sweets sampled on the spot and takes them to the checkout to pay."

"A recurring phrase of Michele is precisely "go to chemistry," where every time there is a need for great concentration for important decisions, he has all the windows closed and, with his closest collaborators, tastes, cleanses the palate from the previous flavor, retastes, tries, and retries dozens of combinations. When he is in there, he loses track of time, does not know what is happening outside, whether it is day or night. Seletto still remembers: "One day we had seventy tastings in just a few hours: all those tests to evaluate the product's reaction… In short, Mr. Michele was a perfectionist to the highest degree." In those meetings, which sometimes last an entire day, anyone who gets distracted gets scolded. When Ferrero sees that someone is not following, he gets impatient: "Why do you come here, if you're not on my wavelength?" He doesn't get angry about mistakes, but about the lack of vibration, the poor participation in his own tension, the desire to understand, to learn new things. And at the center of all his creativity and the team's energies, he places the quality of the product."

"planet, Michele Ferrero personally goes to initiate preliminary contacts with the producers. One such pioneering trip concerns Turkey, the main supplier of hazelnuts (seventy percent of this resource comes from there, where hazelnuts ripen in September). Arduino Borgogno explains: “Italy produces forty thousand tons of hazelnuts a year. Of these, twenty-five thousand are good for use, so all the crops and products in Italy would cover a quarter of the company’s needs, because Ferrero requires one hundred and ten thousand tons of them: hence the need to supply from abroad.”"

"The genesis of that product was narrated by the Spaniard Arturo Cardelus, during a conference of Ferrero in Russia. “At the base, there was the memory of a touching story that one day Michele Ferrero had told a friend from marketing: 'My father during World War I was on the Russian front and one day, at the end of the war, he found himself in difficulty. A babushka [in Russian, grandma] took pity on him and gave him three eggs. With those three eggs, he was able to survive. That's why I made Kinder Surprise: for me it is like giving eggs to the whole world as a gesture of gratitude.' He recounted this story several times. Usually, he would start telling it, then he would get emotional and said to me: 'Now, Arturo, you finish this story.'""

""As a final result, we created 'mythical products' that created new markets, entered into the customs and lifestyle of families. I believe, without fear of exaggeration, that Ferrero alone has managed to create a number of 'mythical products' that have made an era in a number far superior to the sum of the companies operating, not only in the confectionery market, but in the entire food sector."

"In 1976, Ferrero is a leader in the confectionery sector in Italy: first in the production of chocolate bars, second for chocolates (Ferrero Rocher has not yet been born, which came after five years of research in 1982) and at the top for spreadable creams. And it's not surprising: almost all products are leaders in their market segment. Michele Ferrero develops a product and then places it in a niche of consumer needs, thus creating a new segment. A product capable of going beyond quick consumption."

"Amilcare Dogliotti recalls the evening when Michele spoke to him not about a product but about the first of those two pioneering projects: “On a walk I took with him in Brussels, Mr. Michele informed me of his strong conviction that has been at the basis of his Social Works: ‘I do not want those who have dedicated their lives to the company to end their lives playing cards in a bar or sitting on a bench waiting for death. I want those who have given their honest and productive work to find, after retirement, their workmates; and that they have the opportunity to freely express those passions that during work they could not share, I think of those who love drawing or those who know how to do ceramics, those who attend theater workshops and sewing, and so on. And then I want to supplement the assistance of the National Health Service so that each one of them can get to the best doctor with the help of Ferrero.” Thus in 1983, the Social Works was established in the Ferrero capital, Alba, and the seed of what would later be called the Michele Ferrero Entrepreneurial Project was spread around the world."

"Everyone knows what they have to do and their breath is precious. There's no room even for the news reporter who would like to interview two workers. They respond: "We have to go back to shoveling, we don't have time for interviews." Only Luigi Revello, a forklift operator who rushed to the factory without being called, explains to the reporters: "It's a matter of mutual respect. Ferrero has always shown it towards me, I show it towards them.""

"Michele wants the Social Works to be named after his parents and Uncle Giovanni because – as Plutarch claimed – 'this is what we mortals have that is immortal: the memory we leave behind, the memory we renew.' And he sets two goals: to take care of, in a sign of gratitude, the retired Ferrero employees, promoting an active, supportive, and creative concept of aging, and to realize cultural and artistic initiatives offered to the entire community, under the motto "Work, create, give.""

""Ferrero was a reserved company, not very accessible to journalists, and for me, who came from Alfa Romeo and the public world, this was a peculiar novelty. I spoke to Mr. Michele about the need for Ferrero to open up to the outside world. His first move was to open the doors of the factories to schools. You can imagine the fascinated look of thousands of students who encountered endless jars of Nutella and Kinder Surprise eggs… It was also the beginning of a partial opening to the outside world so as to present Ferrero as a possible model for Italian industrialization.""

"From that episode stems the advertising page made every summer in which it is announced that 'Of all these Ferrero products, we sold zero because they were withdrawn from the market at the first heat to reappear in autumn'."

"The timetable for the Children's Train is very packed, with a new stop being added every day. To keep track of it, a large board is prepared. Michele has it placed behind his armchair: a sort of schedule where he notes, region by region, date by date, a hundred festivals in Italy and around the world, almost as if to visually underline his motto "There is no party without Ferrero.""