“We continue to grow and diversify” – Corriere.it

The extraordinary case of growth made in Italy, as the president and CEO Andrea Sasso and the managing director Giorgio Gobbi like to call Italian Design Brands, ready for the big leap. Thursday 18 May at nine, for the Italian hub of high-end furniture and design, born in 2015 on the initiative of Private Equity Partners and investors such as Paolo Colonna and the Gervasoni brothers of the company of the same name, will be like another first day of school . The bell of the Milan Stock Exchange will ring, where the group will be listed on the Euronext Star segment, becoming the first public company of Italian design. A decisive step that directs the future of the company towards further development, which already boasts growth rates of 40% year on year. A sort of phase two carefully prepared by the management and anticipated in recent days by another announcement, the entry into the share capital of Giovanni Tamburi’s Tip. The banker will acquire 51% of Investindesign, a company that is upstream of Idb (of which he owns 67%, while 29% of the company that is listed in the hands of the Gervasoni brothers), an operation subject to landing in Piazza Affari.

Still grow

When Idb was born, the listing was already a promise – explains Sasso, from the Marches with a career, among others, in Merloni, Elica, Marazzi, iGuzzini -. Now is the right time to do it: we go public to attract capital and grow further, through the visibility that the market can give to our brands, the transparency, which already characterizes us and will only increase, and new talent. We are convinced that managing companies facilitates the attraction of skills and helps to take them even where they would not go on their own. I am thinking, for example, of our province, rich in excellence and struggling in this sense. A gap to fill, because people always make the difference. The arrival in the shareholding structure of a heavyweight like Tamburi also made the difference. a positive fact, which is helping the listing itself, and will allow us to reach new partners and companies more easily – remarked Sasso -. everything went very quickly, Tamburi is a long-term investor, he chose us and we are proud of him, his investment strategies are in line with ours. Tip was also welcomed by the entrepreneurs who make up the industrial core of Idb (ten companies, 13 brands and over 650 people), because it opens a long-term “phase two”, which was already in the DNA of the “club deal” which gave life to the company, Gobbi intervenes, in Idb since its foundation.

How does the structure of the group change?

With the landing in Piazza Affari, the structure of the group will change: in addition to Tip, the founders of the hub make room, by selling pro-rata shares. However, the development plans and the selection and governance criteria of the companies joining Idb will not change. A company that does well remains guided by those who make it go well – continues Gobbi -. l that we will continue to look at: we don’t acquire companies to restructure them. We have created a team of entrepreneurs who discuss with each other, ask for advice, with a positive word of mouth that is good for the whole business. Thus the group’s turnover soared to over 265 million, with an ebidta of over 49, while of that 40% growth, 30% comes from acquisitions – says Sasso – which for us are not extraordinary growth, while 10% comes from the organic growth of our companies: above the average for the high-end design sector. Idb’s business today can be divided into four strategic areas: furnishings with Gervasoni, Meridiani, Saba and Gamma Arredamenti; light with Davide Groppi, Flexalighting and Axolight; The luxury contract with Cenacchi and Modar; finally the last entrance, kitchens and systems with Cubo design. A cohesive and robust nucleus of Made in Italy companies – Gobbi remarks -. But it is not excluded that after the Stock Exchange we can look abroad. We wouldn’t invent anything new after all: fashion has given us the model. With the injection of new capital, attention could also turn to larger sizes of companies. We started with Gervasoni who had a turnover of 20 million, then we concentrated on companies with turnovers between 5 and 50, with the listing we will also be ready to exceed this threshold, explains Gobbi.

Diversification in sight?

And the managers do not hide the possibility of concentrating on other potentially strategic areas as well, we have already identified at least three: we can strengthen ourselves in the outdoor sector, we have not yet entered the bathroom segment. Or follow the trend of home furnishings. After all, fashion and design are an increasingly successful combination: in the last three years the collections of brands such as Armani, Fendi, Dolce & Gabbana and the like, dedicated to living, have recorded increasing revenues, in an increasingly crowded market. For us they are not a competitor – explains Gobbi -, in a certain sense they are startups in the same way that we are. Even more attention is being drawn to a market, top-of-the-range design, which today is worth 40 billion euros worldwide, but still has a lot of potential to explore. After the IPO there will be a reshuffle between old and new shareholders. Today Idb already owns 100% of Meridiani, Saba and Gervasoni. We will also go up to 100% in Modar, Cenacchi and Davide Groppi: three other entrepreneurs become shareholders of Idb and this is the maximum expression of trust they can show us – concludes Sasso -. Trust is a cornerstone of the IDB model, and crucial for good ideas to emerge. This is why we think that a center like ours could be replicated in other Made in Italy sectors that can benefit from an aggregation. On one condition: that managers speak the same language as entrepreneurs, made up of competence and passion.