Gandini: 'For Flos B&B Group we put the industrial project back at the centre'
Piero Gandini, the group's new executive chairman, talks about his development strategy: starting with the product and a distribution more focused on B2B channels
3' min read
3' min read
As is often the case, big projects have a somewhat random genesis. "During a fortuitous meeting with Marco De Benedetti (chairman of Italy at Carlyle, ed), we started talking about the group's companies and joked that I could get back in". Then the joke became serious and in January Piero Gandini returned as executive chairman of the Flos B&B Italia Group, which includes Flos, B&B Italia, Louis Poulsen, Maxalto, Arclinea, Azucena, FENDI Casa, Audo Copenhagen and Lumens, and is jointly controlled by Carlyle and Investindustrial. A group that Gandini himself (for many years managing director of Flos) had helped found in 2014 and then left in 2019.
With which objective has he returned?
In these five years, the shareholders have sought a development very much linked to the objective of listing, which did not happen. Now that the IPO is no longer on the table, we need to return to a purely industrial management of the group's companies, with the timing and priorities typical of the activities of a design company. We must put back at the centre of attention the real reason why these companies exist and have grown over the years, linked to their editorial and industrial development capabilities.
In concrete terms, what will you do?
Many things have been done in these years for business development. These have been very complex years, characterised by Covid, the explosion of demand following the end of the crisis, wars and geopolitical instability. These are healthy and solid companies. The group ended 2024 slightly down on 2023 (LTM revenues for the year to September 2024 were EUR 761.8 million, ed), but with ebitda in line. What is needed now, however, is a cultural change, to address priorities according to an industrial logic, starting with the design and production of a certain number of winning products each year and the reorganisation of the sales network. These are actions that take time and, in agreement with the shareholders, we will take the necessary time.
