Michele Ferrero

"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."

"As I was arriving, I was losing my courage because I was so, so, so shy, really super-shy. When I arrived in town, I immediately went to the first bakery I found, there were three steps to climb and I stumbled. When I arrived I saw a man with an unkempt beard and terrible little eyes scrutinizing me. "What do you want, pretty boy?" I wasn't capable of putting my words in order, I always stumbled, and he urged me on: "Tell me, lad, tell me..." I stammered: "Two wheat loaves, two rolls, please." And I left. But I must not give up, I told myself, despite my endless shyness. I found another baker, entered the shop and, oh Madonna, it was again a man! With a two-day beard, wide-open eyes... "But what do you want?" I stammered again: "Give me two wheat loaves, please." Then, finally, I went to a lady who certainly was a mother, and seeing this poor little son coming forward... I told her: "Thank you, madam, I am here" and showed her my business card. She says to me: "I've never seen it. But where is the chocolate factory in Alba? I didn't know there was a chocolate company there". And me: "Look, in Alba we made a very good product that Langa has consumed a lot and so if I can..." "Let me see." I advance with this wooden box, I don't know if you remember, it was an extraordinarily simple thing, I showed the product, I opened it but the oil had come out, the wood had turned all black, and she says to me: "But, pretty boy, what do you want me to do with this merchandise? I can't do anything." And me: "Look, I'll leave this as a sample and I'll come back in the afternoon if you allow me..." I went out to eat, I ate my four sandwiches, I drank a bit of water from the communal fountain, and around one o'clock I went back. I looked inside the window of the lady's bakery and saw that the product was no longer there. My God, she sold everything! I thought. 'So, ma'am, I no longer saw the goods in the window, does that mean that you sold everything?' 'No, no, pretty boy, it's that it all collapsed!' 'So, ma'am, I apologize, I'll take everything back and go home.' 'But no, pretty boy, there's no need' she told me. 'When my customers came in, they smelled the scent of hazelnuts and asked where it was coming from... With their sense of smell they headed towards your product and in the end, a slice here, a slice there, I sold everything. So, pretty boy, I want to place a purchase order for ten kilos of stuff.' I went back home with this order and said: 'We won, dad!' And from there started the story of Ferrero»."

"He is Michele Ferrero, the Italian genius of 'making,' the inventor of hugely successful products such as Nutella, Kinder, Ferrero Rocher, Mon Chéri, Estathé, Fiesta, and Tic Tac: products that have become familiar brands recognized in every corner of the planet, thanks to which the Group bearing his name grew from a thousand employees in the fifties to four thousand in the sixties, to then rise to ten thousand in 1990, up to the current 41,441 worldwide."

"The fundamental values that distinguish us have allowed us to continue to achieve our goals and maintain a solid business continuity even during this difficult period."

"In the early 1926, Pietro and Piera are in Alba, where they open a pastry shop on the corner of Vittorio Emanuele street and Pierino Belli street. The connection with Dogliani remains strong and every summer, once school is over, young Michele spends the holidays with mother Piera at his grandparents' and uncles' farm, which includes a hazel grove and a vineyard of their own, in the small district of Pianezzo, four kilometers from the main town. Years later, with his uncle Giovanni, he also goes up to Viaiano, to take part in the grape festivals or to drive some new tractor. The bond between the two brothers, Pietro and Giovanni, and their hometown will remain strong as long as they are alive: in 1956, for example, on the occasion of the Melbourne Olympics, Giovanni will present the community with one of the first televisions, an Olympic Channel set in a wooden cabinet, which will allow the locals to watch the programs of the newly-born Rai and the Olympic competitions which will see the Italians triumph in fencing, rowing, cycling."

"The story of a man, a family, a company, and a land that in the early twentieth century was defined as 'of the losers' and which proved in the third millennium to be that 'of the winners'. A story that starts from far away, from a small village in the Piedmontese Langhe, thirty-two kilometers from Alba, Farigliano, and from an apparition."

"We, the Ferreros, as a family company, believe that value is created by building mutual trust and taking responsibility towards those who work with and for us. On a planet under ecological and social pressure, it is essential that companies take care of their people and the communities in which they operate, extending their reach to the supply chains."

"There is sadness and hope in the Ferrero home. Mother Clara, having become a widow after the death of her husband Michele in 1911, must also say goodbye to the two sons on whom she had pinned her hopes to carry on the family tradition. The two boys are convinced that their destiny lies elsewhere, not among those four farmhouses, the woods, the vineyards, and the hazelnut groves that descend from six hundred meters above sea level down to the Tanaro river. They want to leave, to find their own path."

"In times when Italians have little money in their pockets, a kilogram of Pasta Gianduja is on sale for six hundred lire compared to the three thousand lire for a kilogram of chocolate. Pietro Ferrero has succeeded in his venture, giving substance to the idea that he has cultivated for years and pursued with determination: to take away from the pastry shop the reputation of being elite, reserved only for the rich or for major festivities. There needed to be a sweet treat for everyone, pleasing to every palate and within everyone's reach: it is the Pasta Gianduja, the fruit of research and patient trials, and the use of machines like that enchanted machine gun, shown by the young Michele to Beppe Fenoglio."

"Challenging because the man made discretion a rule (“dis lu a niun”, don’t tell anyone, was one of his favorite expressions); exciting because it allowed to shed light on the entrepreneurial humanism of the protagonist of a family business that has withstood the great crisis, that creates wealth with honor and distributes it fairly; that aims at profit not with the ruthless approach of predatory and rapacious capitalism, but according to the logic, to use his own words, that “doing good for oneself is also good for others”."

"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."

"How was Pasta Gianduja born? It was the beginning of 1946, a year of restart for Italy, with the reinstatement of journalists purified by fascism, the return of the Corriere della Sera to newsstands, and the resumption of radio broadcasts across the national territory, and the institutional referendum between the monarchy and the winning Republic. One day Giovanni, who had just returned from a trip to Turin, came to the laboratory and suggested to Pietro to experiment with something using molasses extracted from sugar beets. Pietro Ferrero starts with a panello, which is a solid residue of hazelnuts, obtained by extracting the oil; uses coconut butter, because cocoa butter was too expensive and difficult to find; and adds lean cocoa powder, sugar or molasses, and obtains a semi-solid mixture which he pours into rectangular molds, obtaining loaves that can be sliced. He submits his discovery to his wife and son, receiving their approval. Why the name Pasta Gianduja? Because the taste of the mixture prepared by Pietro Ferrero reminds of the gianduiotti that Turin pastry chefs had invented at the beginning of the nineteenth century, following the Continental Blockade imposed by Napoleon after the defeat at Trafalgar. The Blockade had led to the disappearance throughout Europe of most of the goods from the colonies, and the Turin craftsmen, to save cacao, mixed it with roasted hazelnuts. The day after finalizing Pasta Gianduja, also known as Giandujot, Giovanni arrives with his famous fire-red Fiat 1100, known throughout the Albese, to collect this new product, approved by the tasters Piera and Michele, and tries to place it with the bakers to whom he supplies yeast."

"It was wartime and sugar was scarce, it was sold on the black market and was very expensive. But my dad, who was a genius, found a way to extract it from molasses, a by-product of beer. He bought a centrifuge and obtained seven percent of sugar crystals from that molasses. And with that sugar and a bit of thick hazelnut paste, he invented "Pasta Gianduja," which my uncle Giovanni, who was a wholesaler who knew how to trade, began to sell throughout the Langhe. For a long time, people were short of everything, and this product smelled of hazelnuts. When the war ended, my father began to wonder why I had never been there."

"An anecdote directly connects Michele Ferrero to the writer, who was three years older. Piero Negri Scaglione tells us about it in the biography of the author of Partigiano Johnny. During the war, in the days of the occupation of Alba, Fenoglio is invited to the home of a family of pastry chefs. "Come down to the cellar, Beppe, I have something to show you," the son of the house owner tells him. Fenoglio finds himself in front of a mysterious object covered by a cloth. "A new machine gun?" asks the writer. "No, much more," replies the young man, removing the cloth: "It's a machine for making chocolate. When the war is over, I will finally be able to devote myself to it full-time." That young man is Michele Ferrero."

"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."

""Sow with wisdom… Know that many seeds go outside the right soil, others are eaten by magpies... Those that go into the right meadow, into fertile humus, must be cared for, made to grow well, with slow and careful development. Slowness will ensure the quality of the fruits.""

""Not as pronouncements of principle or abstract formulas, but with concrete examples, which occurred in everyday life. Usually, on the weekends at home, he involved us in his researcher's choices. This accelerated the responsible positioning on our part as his children, he encouraged us to have a mature attitude in the challenges that life presents, he wanted us to grow up as quickly as possible with that tenacious pragmatism that was also somewhat typical of the post-war historical period and the culture of origin. He was a bit of a son of the Italian economic miracle, convinced that it was always possible to push beyond the possible, that any aspiration to well-being was legitimate, that progress was the guarantor of a better standard of living compared to the conditions of scarcity and deprivation that he and those of his generation had known.""

"those first tastings and hazelnut-based products, Cioni provides some tasty details: "A challenging activity for Michele was finding the right proportions to blend hazelnut and chestnut powder together. He would crush the hazelnuts in class during lessons. He’d open the desk drawer, place the hazelnuts on the inside edge of the drawer, and then close it sharply, covering (or attempting to cover) the noise with a coughing fit. After crushing the hazelnuts, he’d use his pencil sharpener to reduce them to small pieces. Then he peeled the chestnuts and chopped those up as well. He measured the quantities of both ingredients and mixed them together on a piece of absorbent paper. He continued to grind the mixture with the pencil sharpener until it became almost powder-like. He would pick up a bit of the powder with the tip of the sharpener and invite us to taste it. Our judgments were always negative, also because by repeatedly working with the pencil sharpener on the desk to grind the mix, it tasted of wood and ink, and bits of absorbent paper would always end up in it." But Michele does not give up. "I must have got the proportions wrong," he explains. "I'll try with two thirds of hazelnuts and one third chestnuts. You'll see it will definitely be better." The hazelnut-chestnut"

"As a boy, Michele saw the poverty of those lands and would not forget. "From there his reserved generosity was born," says Serafino Bindello, his personal driver for twenty-eight years. "He did charity but discreetly. Nobody knew that in the morning I was going around delivering money for someone he had seen in difficulty the day before.""

"His diploma had been confirmed by the Purge Commission [composed of professors of proven anti-fascist belief and former partisan students, re-examined all the diplomas issued from 1943 to 1945, cancelling those who had been suspected of fascism or collaborationism] but he was not too interested in that fact. He told me that Michele Ferrero's diploma had also been confirmed and he planned to visit him in Alba where he was setting up a factory to make chocolate."

"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?""

""A challenging activity for Michele was finding the right proportions to blend hazelnut and chestnut powder together. He would crush the hazelnuts in class during lessons. He’d open the desk drawer, place the hazelnuts on the inside edge of the drawer, and then close it sharply, covering (or attempting to cover) the noise with a coughing fit. After crushing the hazelnuts, he’d use his pencil sharpener to reduce them to small pieces. Then he peeled the chestnuts and chopped those up as well. He measured the quantities of both ingredients and mixed them together on a piece of absorbent paper. He continued to grind the mixture with the pencil sharpener until it became almost powder-like. He would pick up a bit of the powder with the tip of the sharpener and invite us to taste it. Our judgments were always negative, also because by repeatedly working with the pencil sharpener on the desk to grind the mix, it tasted of wood and ink, and bits of absorbent paper would always end up in it." But Michele does not give up. "I must have got the proportions wrong," he explains. "I'll try with two thirds of hazelnuts and one third chestnuts. You'll see it will definitely be better.""

"the beginning of the history, dated May 14, 1946, the day the Sole Proprietorship P. Ferrero, a chocolate, nougat, and various sweets factory, was officially born."

"Ferrero entered Maria Franca's life "in a completely unexpected way," for her and her family. "Businessmen have never been my passion. And when my mother, Felix, found out that I was dating a young entrepreneur, she called my cousin Gino Bima, from Fossano, a deputy for five legislatures in the fifties and sixties, a very cultured man, with degrees in Literature and in Law, passionate about Roman history, to get his opinion: she wanted information about that Ferrero. To ensure a framework of confidentiality, my mother and my father Giuseppe secluded themselves in the living room. And then I did something I've been ashamed of for a long time: I eavesdropped behind the closed door. At one point the door opens just as my cousin is telling my mother: 'Don't worry, Felix, Ferrero is a man of principles.' And this he then demonstrated with a good business management: he knew how to enhance the agriculture of the places, the sharecropping peasants, the culture, the management of the crises faced even creating new wealth and new jobs, training the workers, promoting women's work, the families, the nursery and the kindergarten, courses for parents, the License for grandparents as a result of meetings in the Foundation animated by the well-known psychotherapist and writer Maria Rita Parsi. And moving with civic engagement both in Europe and in Alba where to the then mayor Ettore Paganelli he asks to be considered an ordinary citizen..."

"Persuading country girls to come to work in Alba, where in the meantime the textile giant Miroglio was also born, is sometimes a feat: the factory is still considered, among the ancient peasant families, a threat."

"Michele dedicates to them a new, joyful idea: the Children's Train, which he had seen in an equestrian circus in Montpellier, and which reminded him of the sugar train displayed by his father Pietro in the window, the one that had enchanted and tempted the small children of Dogliani in 1923. The goal is to give them wonder, fun, and sweets. Thus, this truck, shaped like a train and almost eleven meters long, appears punctually on the occasion of parties and carnivals, fairs, and other events, and distributes each time tons of candies and chocolates, pencils, and markers. The idea has an exceptional appeal. For many children, traveling by train is a dream, and just seeing it pass by is an event. In many countries, the railway doesn't even pass through. "It was a celebration to see the little ones chasing us without ever giving up; they seemed to fly they were so happy," recalls Vittorio Novello, who drove it from 1963 to 1968. "We would leave from the Aosta Valley and arrive in Piazza San Marco in Venice and down to Sicily. I would go home from time to time, but I couldn't wait to leave again with the little train to travel through cities and make other children happy. We even did two Tours of Italy in 1967 and 1968 with Eddy Merckx, Felice Gimondi, and Franco Bitossi. It was unforgettable; we were always surrounded by young people who asked us for the famous mou candies. They were soft, likable, and chewable. I can say that I made a good part of Italy happy with that contraption.""

"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.""

"Feeding his passion, the reading of specialized magazines has always been at the base of his constant updating: Michele never misses an issue of Italian publications (few) and also foreign ones (many), assisted in translation by a young and promising assistant who would also make her way into his heart, Miss Maria Franca Fissolo."

"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."

"On a chalkboard in the Chemistry room, there is still a trace of the rules indicated by Mr. Michele to achieve exceptional uniqueness, an ideal compass for new entrepreneurs. "If you want to go bankrupt, listen to everybody. Without you making the final decision," is one of those guiding phrases."

"Michele Ferrero would later explain: "We are particularly interested in following the product through all its phases: when it is broken down in the crumb, when it takes shape, when it leaves the factories, when it enters the homes where the judgement will be pronounced. A judgement that can make our fortune or our ruin. That's why we want to know it immediately, through the retailers. Their opinion, their advice is very precious to us."

"Giovanni. "Sow wisely," he repeats, "be aware that many seeds go outside of the right soil, others are eaten by magpies... those that go into the right meadow, in the fertile humus, must be cared for, made to grow well, with slow and careful development. The slowness will ensure the quality of the fruits.""

"In Alba and the Langhe there is still nothing. Imagine chocolate, which costs about three thousand lire per kilo at the time: a real luxury. Pietro Ferrero understands that at this moment his old idea of making chocolate popular is even more important: to increase production, he must create specialties at much lower prices."

""Mr. Michele outside the supermarket, after making his choice, would ask people: 'Why did you buy it? For whom are you buying it?’. He translated the consumer's needs into an inimitable and unique product, accessible to everyone.""

"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.""

"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'."

"In the house in Montecarlo, where in 1997 he would retire, leaving the helm of the company in the hands of his children, he had a laboratory constructed, equipped with cutting-edge technology, where, with the help of specialized staff, he would continue to experiment with recipes."

"in 2009 I moved to the secretariat of Michele Ferrero. He was looking for someone who could be available also at unusual hours: 'I need a secretary to cover the nighttime part of my project activity.' Mr. Michele slept little: it could happen that an idea came to him, to be codified immediately, very early in the morning. I was used to the singularities of his requests: one day, during the Christmas period, I left for Brazil with a package of products to test for that market.""

""There must be a harmony of sounds, a chorus of flavors, whatever ruins it all get rid of it, choose only those with the most delicate notes," are the words of Ferrero according to Morena Salvatore. Another witness of those product development meetings, Teresio Ugo Marasso, recalls another recurring phrase: "Tell me I am crazy, but still do as I say. You technicians must realize the product, then I as an entrepreneur will decide.""

""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.""

"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.""

"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.""

"Dear Madam, I am grateful for your kind invitation to give an interview for the prestigious daily newspaper with which you are associated. However, as you yourself write, I have made it a rule not to give them. Interviews are like cherries: if you start with one, it's then hard to resist the others. And I feel that I must instead continue to concentrate on the work that I am most passionate about: the search for ever new products, which meet the favor of consumers, like the Nutella you kindly mentioned. Warm wishes to you and your boyfriend."

"In fact, the leap occurs precisely with the legendary little eggs, which are the result, once again, of the inventiveness of Michele Ferrero. The idea is to combine snack time with play. For children, the fact that there is a surprise inside the little egg is intriguing: for them, to use the creator's own words, "it's as if it were Easter all year round." But even more interesting is the thought behind the surprises. "We need to make quality surprises. We cannot disappoint the children," explains Ferrero himself. "Kinder Surprise is an 'emotion' because inside there is always something new and unexpected, something surprising. It is 'magic', because it enchants and amazes you. It is 'the game of imagination' but it is also 'the child that is inside each one of us'. So Kinder Surprise is good for everyone. Young and old. Because it is a tale where we all care about each other.""

"In the early Nineties, Michele Ferrero decided to take on nothing less than the summer heat. He had long suspected that his products suffered from it, especially at certain latitudes, and realized that chocolate sold less from June to September (the famous 'summer gap' first experienced in Germany), it had to be deseasonalized. A very complicated challenge, but his ingenuity and tenacity never back down from any obstacle; they always find a way to overcome it."

"Alba is already famous for its truffles, and the Langhe are on their way to becoming known for their wines, but no one has yet grasped the potential of the hazelnut, the one that the PGI specifications, Protected Geographical Indication, will call the 'round gentle trilobate of the Langhe' or more simply, 'Piemonte Hazelnut'. There is plenty, and of excellent quality. For its good yield – usually between twenty and thirty quintals per hectare – and especially for its organoleptic qualities it will then be considered the best variety in the world; many characteristics make it a winner in the market. A manual of hazelnut cultivation (from the Latin corylus, hazelnut) helps us to identify them. Meanwhile, the"

"Ferrero OMS was founded for the conception and production of patented machinery, which would later become Ferrero Engineering. In supermarkets, a mini chocolate bar appears: it is called Kinder Cereali, with buckwheat, barley, rice, and spelt."

"Some start calling him 'the scientist'. There are those who spy on him from the laboratory's glass windows and say that, when he is not called to the cash register, Pietro spends hours and hours on vials and alembics, in a white coat, with the air of a chemist engaged in who knows what kind of alchemy."

"First: innovation. That’s what it means to do something different from everyone else. Everyone made solid chocolate and I made it creamy and Nutella was born; everyone made boxes of chocolates and we started selling them one by one, but wrapped like a gift;"

"The glorious Giandujot, although excellent and best-selling, sometimes oozes from the packaging, and for this flaw, some merchants complain. Michele discovers in a specialized magazine the existence of a substance, soy lecithin, which has the ability to retain fats. In Europe, lecithin is still almost unknown, few import it. But he manages to find some. The experiment is a success. The addition of lecithin stabilizes the mixture and allows the launch in 1951 of Supercrema, as is named what we might call the mother of Nutella. It is sold in containers ranging from airtight tins to tubs and glasses, but also in toy wooden houses."

""If we imitate the products of the big competitor companies, we will inevitably lose, because they crush us with their strength. They are fighter bombers and we are a small boat. They can wipe us out with a single blow. We must keep our distance. Instead, we must invent new products that they do not have. If we can meet the new needs of consumers, then we have a hope of making it. We must invent a chocolate that kids like. They are known to be fond of it. But this chocolate must also be good for mothers, we have to convince the mothers.""

"Very much loved by the workforce (eight thousand accompany her on her last earthly journey), always at the center of the company's activities, since the beginning Piera took care of the administration of the company and the entire organizational part, continuing to live in the house inside the factory, in a modest apartment of an equally modest building, which it was rightly decided to preserve."

"That pastry shop, marking the starting line of the Ferrero marathon, is still there today, almost a century later, renamed Caffè Bicerìn under the arcades of via Corte, next to the ancient Porta Soprana in Dogliani."

"The Chemistry room is his magical world. Inside, the outside world, with its noise and distractions, ceases to exist. Within those four walls, anything can happen. He tastes, selects materials, mixes different molecules, questions the reactions of colleagues until the whole team agrees. The individual pieces move from sight to touch, from smell to taste. It's almost theater. Ferrero places the products at the center of the table and begins to converse: "You, little hazelnut from Piedmont, which are so beautiful, do you like that cocoa?" He brings them to life. With his Chemistry staff, he has his own language that is not the language of hardship but of creative imagination, of a lover's passion. In his products, there is always him, Michele Ferrero, his research, his time dedicated to perfecting 'comfort,' as he calls it."

"Michele Ferrero divides entrepreneurs into two categories: missionaries and mercenaries. The former, explains Arduino Borgogno, are characterized by a strong and primary love for the product-business and for the man before the factory ("love what you do, make it grow and be generous and supportive towards those who help you make it grow, don't do it just for the business"). In this perspective, wary of economic neoliberalism, his generosity towards employees fits in: generosity of daily small gestures ("one day he was wearing one of his nicest coats and a worker complimented him. He took it off and gave it to him," recalls Francesco Paolo Fulci) but which, as legal advisor Giulio Coppi recounts, could even extend to pondering the transfer of company stakes: "One day Mr. Michele calls me and asks me to study a solution to give something extra to longer-serving employees, those with over twenty-five years, to make them feel his gratitude for what they had done and were doing for the group. He specified: 'I want to give one company share to every employee'. At that time, the potential beneficiaries were more than four thousand. I committed to studying the operation which turned out to be complex and not feasible because of the financial architecture, all family-based. And therefore with great disappointment of Mr. Ferrero, who was hardly persuaded to abandon an idea once he had it, I explained that it was impossible to proceed without risking the entire corporate structure. It didn’t happen, Michele set aside his plan with much pain.""

"1) In your interactions, make your colleagues feel at ease. Dedicate the necessary time to them and not just scraps. Make sure to listen to what they have to say. Don’t give them the impression that you are on edge. Never make them feel 'small.' The most comfortable chair in your office should be reserved for them. 2) Make clear decisions and let your colleagues help you, they will believe in the choices they have contributed to. Learn to work together. If you do not understand the needs of those who follow you, you are done for: you interrupt the flow and are not cooperative. There should never be separation. 3) Involve colleagues in changes and details (success is a series of details lined up), and discuss them before implementation with those concerned. 4) Communicate favorable appreciation to workers, praise them publicly, communicate unfavorable ones privately when necessary. In the latter case, do not limit yourself to criticism, but indicate what should be done in the future to help learn. 5) Your interventions should always be timely: 'Too late' is as dangerous as 'Too soon.' 6) Act on causes rather than behavior. 7) Consider problems in their general aspect, allow employees some margin of tolerance. Think of yourselves as painters, not whitewashers. 8) Always be human. If you have a good relationship with people, you bring home a good result. If you argue, you bring nothing. 9) Do not ask for the impossible. 10) Serenely admit your mistakes, it will help you not to repeat them. And try to forgive some mistakes. 11) Care about what your colleagues think of you. 12) Do not pretend to be everything to your collaborators, in that case you would end up being nothing. 13) Beware of those who flatter you, in the long run they are more counterproductive than those who contradict you. And surround yourself with smiling people, they bring more luck. Man speaks from the head and the guts: when he speaks from the guts, do not listen too much and neither should you blame him. One must understand the weaknesses of man. 14) Always give what you owe and remember that often it is not a question of how much, but of how and when. 15) Never make decisions under the influence of anger, haste, disappointment, worry, but leave them for when your judgment can be more serene. 16) Remember that a good leader can make a normal man feel like a giant, but a bad leader can turn a giant into a dwarf. 17) If you do not believe in these principles, give up being a leader."

""For example, he was not satisfied with knowing that the lemon was bought, say, from Calabria or the Amalfi Coast: he wanted to know at what altitude it was grown, whether it was exposed to the sun or not, then he wanted to know if two hundred meters higher there were other lemons perhaps with a different flavor, better, in short, the final choice became a choice derived from the extraordinary knowledge of the raw material. If you wanted to know all the details of an Indian mandarin, he would tell you with surprising details. He defined the product as 'an orchestra' and each raw material had to be tuned according to the score of that orchestra. But be careful: your product can be a catchy tune, but it risks only lasting one summer, or it can be a big work like La traviata, which lasts forever.""

"Michele does not hide his affection for Olivetti and his thoughts, especially when he argued that 'the term utopia is the most convenient way to dismiss what one does not feel like doing, cannot do, or does not have the courage to do. A dream seems like a dream until someone starts somewhere, only then does it become a purpose, that is something infinitely bigger.'"

"unique." "You must go and see, contact people, understand the competitors' products that are affecting ours..." And so I traveled the world," confirms Morena Salvatore, who has been in marketing in Alba for years. "From Tokyo to Shanghai, from Hong Kong to Beijing, from Johannesburg to New Delhi... In this wide geographical horizon, Mr. Michele inserted and planned time around the appointments marked on his agenda. For example, he knew that Valentine's Day in Italy lasts just one day, but in America and Japan it lasts several days, it's a gift not only for your loved one, but also for friends, your teacher, your neighbors, it's a celebration of affection, and he wanted to try to introduce this concept in other countries as well. A 360-degree lovers' celebration." The vision of Michele Ferrero, his international vocation, would become part of a corporate culture that has never ceased to live."

"- Easter every day. What was the intuition that seemed the craziest but gave me the most satisfaction? It happened years later, in Italy, when I thought that the chocolate egg could not be something that was sold and eaten once a year, at Easter. But something smaller was needed, that you could buy every day at an affordable price, but it had to replicate that experience, and so the surprise was needed, but in miniature. I thought of Valeria as a mother, who could reward her child for getting a good grade at school, of Valeria as a grandmother who gave it away to be told, "You're the prettiest grandmother in the world," or of Valeria as an aunt who managed to get that kiss and hug from her nephew that always seemed so hard to win. But so much chocolate could worry mothers, so I thought of reversing the traditional assumption by advertising that there was "more milk and less cocoa," what better feeling for a mother than giving more milk to her child? So, I decided and ordered twenty machines to produce small eggs, but the company thought they had misunderstood or that I had gone mad and did not start the order."

"research scared me and they did not want to bring it to France and so today the foreign market is already full of competitors. And then we invented a soft and extremely light little box which was an absolute novelty and the straw... - I was able to do all this because of being a family and not being listed on the Stock Exchange: this allowed us to grow calmly, to have long term plans, to know how to wait and not be caught up in the frenzy of the daily ups and downs."

"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."

"when in June 1991 he was announced the intention to award him an honorary degree in Economics and Commerce. Michele sends two lines to the dean of the faculty, Daniele Ciravegna, and to the then vice-chancellor, Oreste Calliano, thanking them but also clarifying his allergy to the spotlight: "I prefer to remain on the sidelines.""

"The strong ethical sense at the base of our entrepreneurial culture is our value chain: each of us works and walks along a path illuminated by the passion, dedication, and determination that we put into the product, from its creation with the highest quality and freshness, from the careful selection of raw materials, from sustainable agricultural practices and initiatives in favor of local communities, from the attention and respect for the individual in every environment in which we operate, in the name of responsible and transparent communication, to the shipping and delivery in the stores where the light shines and warms the hearts of consumers."

"Did he know about Michele's experiments with hazelnuts during school in Mondovì? "No and I find this biographical detail curious. I believe this precursor sign is due to our grandfather Pietro, who was an inventor, had eccentric and original traits, very sui generis, of the first-generation entrepreneur, starting from pastry making and landing in the factory. Dad Michele breathed the air of the family pioneer, his father, who was also a man of extraordinary modernity and ahead of his time.""

"To use one of the metaphors he was fond of, a good entrepreneur must be like a good skeet shooter: hitting the target by aiming not at the launch station but further ahead. With a long-term vision, he had created the basis for the continuous increase in the value of products as the result of a constant and determined commitment that involved the use of resources, the making of investments, relentless efforts that lasted over time. The products have thus acquired a long-lasting life, progressively increasing their potential with the conquest of a significant competitive advantage in the market.""

"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."

"Regarding trips, a significant story about how Michele Ferrero intended them comes from Francesco Garetto, curator of the Balvano project and Ferrero in Africa: “One day we spent a holiday in Senegal. We were there with Mr. Michele, no official reception... Basically, our vacation was to visit all the shops and small stores, taste the local specialties, understand what people ate. Tourism? Zero, we only took a bath, then visited the markets and got to know the local festivals. These were the goals, the festivals, he tried to understand how these people lived: the families, the school, the festivals.""

"Michele is well aware of the concept of 'fresh'. "We all love fresh things because they are tastier, healthier, and more genuine. We must be able to provide fresh products to young people as well." It's clear that 'fresh' means different things. First of all, it's a pleasurable sensation for the palate, especially when it's hot and you're thirsty. But fresh also means genuine and natural, a product that retains the nutritional values of the substances it contains. In addition, fresh means without preservatives and chemical additives, that is, something that must go in the refrigerator like milk; a product as nature offers it."

""The creation process was complemented by marketing, based on five fundamental principles that Mr. Michele conveyed to us in almost daily contact to focus on the consumer, the famous Mrs. Valeria: a) The consumer is the end point and the judge of all our actions: defending the consumer means defending our work. b) Our relationship with the consumer takes place through the product: our company is strong if our products are strong. c) If a market is interesting (size, rate of development, know-how) we must become its leader. d) Our company is a multinational, fighting with other powerful multinationals: we must think and act in terms of 'global market'. e) Our products are launched, managed, cared for, and defended by the men and women who work in the company: our human resources are as important as our products."

"Today, Kinder is a company within a company. We owe Salice additional details on the origin of the Kinder Division: "It was a new category of chocolate, able to reassure mothers for its high percentage of milk and for its portioning, but also capable of satisfying the sweet tooth and the desire for tasty treats of the youngsters. The idea of Kinder Chocolate arose during a visit by Michele Ferrero, incognito as he liked to do, to the sales points in Frankfurt. In front of the chocolate bar section, he asked some colleagues – and therefore first himself – how to enter the chocolate bar market. The answer he gave was a chocolate bar specialized for children, not whole, but divided into many bars, each individually wrapped. Because it is portion-controlled, Kinder Chocolate can be regulated by the mother according to the various needs of the moment. Even if the mother gives the child only one bar, she does not give him a piece of chocolate, but a finished portion, and the child is happy. The presence of the cardboard box gives a particular elegance to the product."

""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."

"the parable of the mushroom hunters that Mr. Michele loved to repeat: "When you go looking for mushrooms, you will find that after a certain climb your legs will weigh you down, and you will have looked for a bench to sit on. Many, after the break, leave the bench and head back. That however is the time to restart towards the top because you will find good mushrooms with fewer searchers and you will be favored.""

"Mr. Michele gave inspiration and momentum to the product creation process which took place through four essential phases, tending: 1) to discover the latent needs of the consumer; 2) to transform these needs into product concepts; 3) to concretely realize products capable of satisfying such needs; 4) to finally define new exclusive technologies for large-scale industrial production."

"The product I love the most? Certainly Nutella, but Mon Chéri is the product from the beginnings, the one that excites me to remember. It was the beginning of the fifties and we went to Germany because I thought that the chocolate market should look North, where they consume it all year round."

"To those who ask why this choice was made, Ferrero replies: "I never wanted to have to justify my choices to anyone. If you want to be free, you must have financial autonomy. My budget is prepared by the economic director and my real CEO who is Mrs. Valeria, the typical consumer.""

""When necessary, he knew how to raise his hand and apologize if nervousness had led him astray in an unusual way. Say that in meetings he had to raise his voice for his role, in the car he would tell me: 'Call that gentleman' and he would apologize. He justified his anxieties like this: 'When I have an inspiration, I want to see it realized in real time, and if someone plays politics or makes agreements and creates dela"

"The problem and the challenge was to believe in it during the sixties. Ferrero often repeated during meetings: 'Children have always been in the hearts of their parents. Who would treat a child badly? What wouldn't one do for them, because they are our life?' And he continued: 'For children, we must make specialized products, with a strong technological value. They must be rich in milk because milk is the foundation of life and health. They must be tasty and appealing, but also healthy and nutritious. For children, we must choose the best and most qualified raw materials. And we have to show the milk we use to make our products.' Then, thinking to himself and out loud, he added: 'Kinder products must be numerous to cover the main moments of the day and the year. We must be able to understand in order to meet all the needs of the children'.""

"without problems of rancidity; the thin film that wraps the seed (perisperm) is easily removed after roasting."

"“A memorable day for me was when, having been recently hired, we were presented by an expert with the ice cream market scenario. The speaker talked and presented charts for almost two hours. After him, Mr. Michele took the floor and said: 'Well, have you taken note of everything the expert has said? Are you able to repeat what he said?' Everyone said yes. And he said, 'Good, now throw away everything you've learned.' It might have seemed like an attack on that expert speaker, but instead he explained that the scenario presented, which cost a lot of money, was useful because we had learned what not to do: 'That is the scenario in which our competitors operate; we instead want and must do something new, different, unique, against the current.' It was an incredible lesson.”"

"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.'""

""Work, work, work; always be connected to work; make a good product at the right price, out of respect for the consumer; never speculate; invest in research, lots of research to discover the latent desires of Mrs. Valeria, the prototype of consumers and the ideal CEO that Michele considers at the top of the company. And have patience because sometimes we would continue for years doing tests. This was a constant characteristic of the entrepreneur Michele. His philosophy was certainly not that of someone who squeezes a lemon until they get a drop, and then throws it away, without any vision; no, he took care of every product with dedication, gradually, trusting in its potential: if the first two years it doesn't make money, it doesn't matter, one must think in the span of five, six years. Think big.""

"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.”"