Founding it in Sirmione, the Gandini Group has successfully developed a fully controlled business chain consisting of three factories that deal with the purchase of textiles, their treatment and their return onto the market, servicing hotels in the area of Rome all the way to the Val di Fiemme. The business relies on the necessary automation, yet, it values human labor which makes a difference when speaking about quality
Starting an industrial laundry named Montebaldo in the town of Sirmione situated on the Brescia part of Lake Garda, with its daily 350 quintals of treated linen, the laundry is somewhat similar to the perfection of a circle that closes the entrepreneurial story of Pierangelo Gandini.
At 59 years of age, the entrepreneur’s eagerness and creative vitality could be honored by “Forever Young”, one of the most loved songs by Bob Dylan. Looking at the initial lines of the lyrics of this terse and comforting ballad: “May your wishes all come true, may you always do for others”, it is impossible not to think about the story of Mr. Gandini. A story made of dreams and people but also of places because the business activity of the Gandini Group, created by the entrepreneur, conveys the names of the pre-Alps territory, especially the one covering Brescia area where the companies were founded. The founder, Pierangelo Gandini, is one of those people who, when speaking about their laundries, happen to get very excited and care about explaining that “product quality is a result of many hours of hard work, work that needs to be done using the most automated machines in the world to iron two or three thousand table cloth napkins a day working in a hot ironing station. When I can, I like showing this to my clients so that they can understand how the famous quality is born, the quality that makes a difference and that, consequently, determines the market price”.
“All my professional life has been marked by dealing with textiles – says Gandini – even before I was born. My father Attilio started it in the ’50s by knocking on the doors of the country-side houses in the Brescia foothills area where he would sell his fabrics: he sold the fabrics while my mother, Armida Calubini, was a tailor. One day, they decided to combine their talents and opened a clothes shop in Ponte San Marco where I started to work when I was a teenager”.
“At that point, it was my turn to go around and work with large hotels and supply them with linen – continues Pierangelo Gandini. – In this way, doing a little bit of both working at the shop and travelling, I learned many new things that turned useful later on, when I decided to extend my business. Slowly, a textile production business called Stelvio was founded in Calcinato followed by Brentatex, a packaging company based in Bedizzole. Then, in 2017, an owner of an industrial laundry from Sirmione, for whom I had been procuring business for years, decided to sell it”.
“It was impossible for me to turn down such an occasion – says Gandini – because buying it would have meant controlling the entire production chain starting from the purchase of fabrics in India and Pakistan to finishing and packaging, including the commercial management of the product, made possible thanks to the laundry. So, I purchased the laundry whose size was 1.200 sq. m. and I named it Montebaldo. In 2019, I turned a part of my other business, Brentatex, into a laundry as well. I treat about 120 quintals of linen per day there. It was necessary due to the increasing, importnat volumes of work. The hotels I work with extend all the way from Val di Fiemme to Rome, covering about a half the Italian peninsula “.
That is how the Gandini Group known today was formed. In 2020 the turnover of the business was 12 million euros summing up the activities of the two laundries, the Brentatex Confezioni, the Stelvio Tessitura, Ganditex and a business called Valli del Garda, jam producer.
Recognized skills, a solid network of business relations consolidated over time and a quality of integrated production are the points of strength of this business that took over four local laundries within just a few years. According to Gandini, the results are not only reflected by the performance of three tunnel washers and eight ironing lines of the two factories. “The Montebaldo just like the Brentatex, have reached such important results – he explains – only because the staff working there know how to work in order to produce quality”.
The reference goes to the hundred workers working at the two laundries. Twenty-five of them are employed directly and the other eighty people collaborate with a cooperative that is going to acquire a new name and status this upcoming spring. “70% of the workers are foreigners – says Pierangelo Gandini – whereas the drivers are Italians as they know the language better and can speak with the clients easier. All of them however, participate in the project of growth governed by the rigorous principles of sustainability in the same way”.
The words come from Sirmione, a place where two thousand years ago, a Latin love poems writer Catullo was already teaching American songwriters and Brescia entrepreneurs how to stay young forever. •
by Stefano Ferrio
Detergo Magazine March 2021
