In the hinterland of Bologna in the 19th century and as far back as seven generations ago, a company was born that is still an excellence in the world today. It all started with a brush, which however becomes much more. So from a traditional brush factory the company has become a manufacturer of machines in the name of digital transformation. Giampaolo Colletti interviews Andrea Simoni, Sales Director of Simoni for FARE INSIEME
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
Photocredit: Giacomo Maestri e Francesca Aufiero
There are business stories that span centuries, in balance between tradition and innovation, between coherence and the drive for change. It is a complex operation because it involves awareness, dedication and passion. The story we are about to tell spans seven generations and three centuries. Everything revolves around a brilliant intuition that becomes a business. Do you know what I am referring to? A simple brush. I'll tell you more about the whatin a moment, but let's start with the where and, above all, the when.
Company profile. The year was 1830. We are in Calcara, a small hamlet of Crespellano, in the metropolitan area of Bologna. Here Simoni was established, a company dedicated to the creation and distribution of brushes. Today the company is located in Zola Predosa, a town of twenty thousand souls in the province of Bologna. An area with important gypsum quarries that, together with six other sites in the Emilia-Romagna region, have become the fifty-ninth Italian site inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. Today, Simoni's headquarters are here, where 30 people work, including internal staff and collaborators. Industrial brushes remain the main product. But why this intuition? Once again it is the brilliant mind of the entrepreneur - even in the nineteenth century we could have defined him as a start-upper - combined with the careful observation of the territory. «My ancestors lived near a river where sorghum grew, a plant with fibres suitable for making brushes. Hence the idea. Today we focus on industrial automation, that is, we have become machine builders ourselves, and we have brushes as our common thread», says Andrea Simoni, head of the sales department. At 23 years old, he joined the family business as an intern while doing a master's degree in marketing management at the Bologna Business School, with a degree in economics and finance awarded from the University of Bologna in his pocket.
The company’s journey. From the small traditional brush factory to manufacturers of machines and therefore of industrial brushes in the name of digital transformation. A story of evolution in the name of coherence. Until the 1930s, brushes were exclusively manual for home use, such as those for hair or clothing or even for shoes. In the 1970s, however, the fifth generation of the company decided to focus on the industrial sector, aiming to produce and market brushes for other companies, specifically for manufacturers of machines that needed brushes for the most diverse reasons and applications. But there will be no shortage of transformations in the years to come, and we will tell you about them shortly. Let's go back to the journey. The transition to industrial brushes happened in the 1950s. At that time, especially in Romagna, many machines were produced for the treatment of post-harvest fruit, therefore for washing, waxing and selection. In all these phases, brushes were used in considerable quantities. The roller brush represented for Simoni the first case of industrialisation of the production process, with the standardisation of the modules and an excellent reproducibility of the product. Currently, both strip and punched brushes are produced, with a particular specialisation for the latter. «We have numerous numerically controlled machines, very diversified among themselves to cover a truly vast range of special requests», says Andrea Simoni. In 2010, also in response to the global financial crisis, Franco Simoni – therefore the sixth generation – together with the technical department decided, in turn, to invent, design and produce automatic machines. Starting precisely from the brushes.
The product. The power of brushes, as well as that of ideas. Brush orienters are able to provide advantages in terms of layout, compactness and productivity. «A brush is mainly made of synthetic materials but also natural ones, such as tampico, a Mexican fibre widely used in the wood sector. From goat hair to horsehair: we work the body of the brush with a work centre and with numerically controlled lathes», Andrea Simoni specifies. A company linked to the territory it belongs to and committed to packaging. But also a company that has been able to reinvent itself. From the wood sector to coffee capsules: because brushes can orient capsules without damaging them, increasing their productivity..«We are specialising in panel dust collectors and also in orienters. Dust collectors are especially useful in the wood sector. There are various reasons why a kitchen, panel, door or furniture manufacturer needs to have a machine that cleans its products, from avoiding processing waste to automating the process. Our orienters are machines that orient three-dimensional objects and – thanks to the use of brushes – we have created unique machines, more compact and with a higher performance than other orienters on the market, with the added advantage that they do not use compressed air. With brush technology we are now able to orient bottle caps, coffee capsules and other objects. We now have extensive experience regarding coffee capsules and our orienters are present at various Italian and international roasters», concludes Andrea Simoni. Thus, a brush becomes much more. Combining tradition and innovation in a winning mix.
https://podcast.confindustriaemilia.it/
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