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Home > Spotlight
Paolo Vitelli, mega-yacht king
Rome - (Adnkronos Multimedia) - Paolo Vitelli, 57 years old, a native of Turin, a daughter aged 29 and a passion common to many true Piedmont natives: the mountains. Such a strong passion pushed him to invest energy and resources into renovating old mountain huts, aimed at enabling everyone to enjoy the pleasures of climbing in the Alps. But this is not Vitelli's only great interest. There is another one, which, however, has been turned into a business and has made him one of the most dynamic and famous Italian entrepreneurs in the world. This is his passion for boats, both sailing boats and motor boats. In 1969, at 22 years of age, Paolo Vitelli founded the Azimut sas. firm, a small company hiring out sailing boats. The following year, Azimut began to import and sell boats on the market; they are mostly built in Holland and Norway. In 1974 the production venture began, but with a spirit different from the one that had held sway among the builders of pleasure boating: from artisan-built boats to industrial production, from just one single boat to a series of boats. Ten years of steady growth up to 1985, when Paolo Vitelli bought the Benetti firm, one of the most famous mega-yacht builders in the world. In 1999 the new factory of Avigliana, near Turin, was built, soon to achieve a surface area of 150 thousand square metres, an absolute record in the pleasure boating sector. At present, the Azimut-Benetti Group is the most important European motor-yacht builder and the leading mega-yacht builder in the world, with a turnover bordering on 500 million euro, 1,600 direct employees and as many employed in side industries, leading Paolo Vitelli also being made President of the Union of Italian Industrialists for the sector.
Beginning from your enthusiasm for the sea to being a world leader in the mega-yacht sector is not a very commonplace occurrence. When you were 22 years old, did you already have this success in mind?
"No, of course at that age I did harbour many dreams, but I could not have imagined what was going to happen" - the President of Azimut-Benett S.p.A. replied. It was due to the development of the sector which above all led to this growth. In the beginning we were all artisans, and only one boat at a time was built. Today the production system for pleasure boating has completely changed, and it has become completely industrialised. This caused us to take the route towards opening our doors to growth. During the Seventies I was not even sure about continuing to build and sell boats. Then the possibility also arose to introduce industrial production models into this sector and everything changed".
From the Azimut sas firm of 1969 to the Azimut-Benetti S.p.A. Group of today, the rhythm of growth has been huge. How have you faced up to this revolution?
"It was awful. Rapid growth in the marketing and services sector is relatively easy, but when you are working in an industrial context everything becomes more complicated. To grow you must produce, and this means training new staff, guaranteeing a product of increasing quality, building factories, completely changing from an artisan way of thinking, when each person could do everything, or almost everything, to that of an industrial system, where each person is able to do only a few things, but knows how to do them expertly, like no one else can".
What about the future? Does your firm hope to grow at the same rhythm?
"The market for pleasure boating is continuing to expand, but not as in the past. Growth will still take place thanks to development in emerging countries, but in the West a phase of stabilisation is anticipated, with a very low development rate. Competition in such a market becomes always more selective, and customers become more and more wary and hard to please. There is no room for making any mistakes: you always have to be the best".
So Paolo Vitelli's challenge still continues?
"Certainly. The only change with respect to the past will be the fact that we will need to concentrate all our energy on the quality of the product and services that we offer to our customers, always introducing more value to what we do".
Contact:
Azimut - Benetti S.p.A.
Via M. L. King 9-11
10051 Avigliana (Torino)
Tel +3901193161 fax +390119367270
www.azimutyachts.net
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