Giorgio Fortini is the new CEO of the Rancilio Group (PICTURE). In this interview he will tell you about his debut and his first months working within a company offering a range of professional coffee machines, both traditional and fully automatic, that are among the most complete and high-tech on the market.
The first part of this interview is devoted the Group’s organizational structure and business philosophy, its achievements and prospects, as well as its R&D Centres. The second part will focus on products.
Let’s start with the Rancilio and Egro pay-off lines: “Coffeeing the world” and “Swiss coffee technology”. What image do they conjure up for you as a manager from an industry other than the coffee and Ho.Re.Ca. worlds?
Giorgio Fortini: “These slogans attracted me immediately. Ambitious and full of impact, communicating real missions for the company. We generate nearly 90% of our turnover in overseas markets and this is a source of great pride for our group. I think of the traditional Rancilio range as the embodiment of Italian excellence that we make available to the rest of the world. Egro Swiss technology is synonymous with high performance and efficiency within the context of fully-automatic solutions for the preparation of coffee and milk-based drinks. Although these are different worlds they are complementary, intertwining and strengthening each other while preserving a strong identity in their specific operating fields”.
You arrived at the Rancilio Group on 9 December 2015. How did you feel about the company and its staff?
Giorgio Fortini: “I found a solid, well-organised and profitable company and I have to thank the Ali Group for giving me this opportunity. My previous experience was in the world of domestic appliances, in particular with the Whirpool Corporation and the Candy Hoover Group, a cultural and professional background that it gives me great pleasure to put at the service of this company. I wish my predecessor Giorgio Rancilio a prosperous future with both personal and professional success. Here I’ve found a well-qualified, skilled team. It is my intention to ensure everyone is keen to make their own active contribution to achieving a shared result. The Rancilio Group occupies a leading position in the traditional coffee machine segment while in the field of fully-automatic products I feel there is still plenty of room for increasing sales volumes, bringing this market share into line with the value of the brand equity enjoyed by the Swiss brand Egro, ever since its early days”.
What action plan have you devised for a company that is already innovative and profitable?
Giorgio Fortini: “My approach focuses on continuity, transformation and evolution rather than revolution. Profitable growth remains my prime objective and this will be achieved through product leverage and business channels to be explored and reinforced. I am extremely happy with the traditional Rancilio range which was enhanced during Host Milano 2015 with the new Classe 7 and Classe 5 coffee machines. In recent years we have also consolidated our leadership position thanks to the revolutionary Xcelsius system, a patented technology that makes it possible to enhance the sensory properties of each blend to obtain the best in-cup result. When it comes to traditional solutions, I can still see plenty of room for development in markets like China where a growing number of cafés and coffee shops are winning over that nation. As for Egro fully-automatic products, we are finally able to present a complete, competitive portfolio. This is a segment showing strong growth, particularly in the context of large catering chains. We are aiming to make our interaction with this type of operator even more effective with a plan of action designed to meet all their needs on an international scale. For example, we can draw great satisfaction from becoming an official partner of the catering giant McDonald’s. This strategic alliance started off in 2011 in the Italian market and, over the course of the years, we have been able to extend this role to cover Portugal, Switzerland, China, Hong Kong, Korea, India, Singapore, Japan, Israel and the Middle East. In April we took part, for the second year running, in the McDonald’s Worldwide Convention in Florida, a hugely important event for our company which put the seal on our partnership with the US catering chain”.
Do these large chains leave you some breathing space, or put a lot of pressure on you over prices?
Giorgio Fortini: “The catering chain sector is in growth the world over. The ability to adapt to the customs and consumption habits in the various different countries and the fact that our products are centred on coffee, a drink with global appeal, are the two key factors in our success doing business with these numerous companies. These giants of the catering world offer such amazing sales volumes that it is well worth entering the fray with a different business plan, specifically designed for this target. New business opportunities are opening up, above all in programmed technical assistance. This brings advantages for both parties in that the big chains know they can rely on constantly high performance, while we are able to bundle a service package with the sale of the product, raising our profile as a reliable global partner”.
What figures can you come up with to give a clearer picture of the Rancilio Group?
Giorgio Fortini: “I’ll concentrate on turnover: 75 million euro last year. 88% of our income comes from overseas and 12% from Italy. The most important region? Asia, accounting for 26%. We are also quite happy with our profitability.”
Is this a company in growth?
Giorgio Fortini: “We have just had two consecutive record years and, for 2016, we are planning to beat the figures for the previous year. This is the trend we are able to observe. As ever we close the balance sheet in August”.
The Group boasts two separate research and development facilities. What can you tell us about their work, given a certain need for confidentiality?
Giorgio Fortini: “The Rancilio R&D department and Egro LAB field a close-knit team whose skills, knowledge and expertise enable them to cover all the various engineering disciplines employed in the professional coffee machine sector. Two centres of excellence that design and test utterly effective responses to ever more complex consumer demands. We decided to create two distinct R&D divisions, one for traditional products and the other for fully automatic solutions, since the two ranges require different yet complementary mechanical, engineering and IT approaches. This creates added value in that R&D draws particular benefits from this bringing together of the professional expertise, know-how and excellence, so typical of the entire Rancilio Group. The location of Egro LAB in Switzerland, in Dottikon near Zurich, provides the opportunity to access technologies and talent that cannot be found elsewhere, promising top-quality input for the work carried out on our products. It must be stated that this opportunity is unique in our sector in that no other company is able to pair two skill-sets with a worldwide reputation for quality, namely Swiss expertise in the development of fully-automatic products and Italian genius in the design of traditional machines. We have an excellent example of this added value right before our eyes with the introduction of the Rancilio Group telemetry and connectivity system, known as CONNECT, to both our traditional and fully-automatic ranges. This application, the fruit of our partnerships with the software house Solair, recently acquired by the Microsoft Corporation, is designed to improve the operating experience of baristas, restaurateurs, technicians and coffee roasters, making possible constant monitoring of all the machines in use. This is a really intuitive and immediate connection made simply with the aid of a desktop or laptop computer, a tablet or a smartphone. The CONNECT technology won the Innovation Prize award at the 2016 trade fair Smau in Padua. This recognition made us both proud and eager to do even better in future”.
What happens at the research centres? Is it all secret?
Giorgio Fortini: “The development of reliable, high-performance solutions presents us with a daily challenge, requiring complete transparency. We commit resources and technical expertise in order to provide our customers with optimum added value. The processes in the design and development of new products and technologies are optimised and rationalised by the use of state-of-the-art equipment. The investments already made and those planned for the future do not just cover working tools, but the most strategic asset of all for making R&D work is represented by human resources, in other words all those designers and technicians who are the beating heart of our laboratories. Some thirty engineers work at our R&D centres in Italy and Switzerland, putting all their passion into the design of a coffee machine and feeling proud to be part of a major manufacturing company like Rancilio. This is the real plus-point we always look for in our team. The two laboratories are separate but not isolated. There is a process of internal governance that involves them in a systematic exchange of ideas, best practice and experiences during the regular weekly meetings”.
A very precise philosophy for innovation is needed for two research centres.
Giorgio Fortini: “We need to make ourselves open to external stimuli, from the initial stages of generating ideas to their implementation. This is not an easy route to take, because alongside changes in management and production, there needs to a cultural evolution in corporate organisation and in the management of human resources. First and foremost, the company must open itself up in order to develop a new collaborative philosophy that starts from the top and filters all the way down. This is teamwork taken to the extreme. Innovation is not and cannot be a mere end in itself, above all it means being able to offer a practical response to explicit and latent needs”.
(1 – to be continued: the second part will devoted to the Group’s range of products)
