The magazine ‘Sistema Serramento’ dedicates a special article to TWT. This first part, published in the No. 27 issue of March 2020, is dedicated to an interview with Filippo Pellitteri, the company’s President and CEO.
On 30 January we visited the TWT company in Rovereto, in the province of Trento, and we asked President Filippo Pellitteri a few questions regarding the ground covered since 2016, the year in which this important Italian company that produces tools for manufacturing wooden and wood/aluminium windows was established.
The meetings with the company’s team was conducted in three different stages that will be published in three parts in three subsequent issues of Sistema Serramento: the morning’s work table focused on the TWT President’s answers, a second technical meeting in the afternoon, and the visit to the production area.
These three moments together clearly showcase the TWT projects that will take shape within the year that has just begun, when we meet [Editor’s note], and the overall vision projected towards the consistent specialisation in the production of tools for the processing of wooden and wood/aluminium windows.
The morning work table welcomes meto sit with the President of TWT Filippo Pellitteri, with the New Business Developer Nicola Pedrotti, with the TWT communication agency represented by Mauro Zamberlan who is a consultant partner of StudioCentro Marketing, and withthe Web and Magazine editor Pietro Ferrari. I find myself here to conduct this interview pleasantly surprised by this youthful and combative president who has already prepared and distributed to those present the answers to all of the questions anticipated, thereby allowing us all to make “just in time” a further step forward in unveiling the strategy of a group that today stands as the leader in its sector in Italy.
From the start, when talking about his current double office as CEO and as president – a role that is certainly important and full of responsibility – Filippo Pellitteri explains that goals are not met alone: for this one needs to be flanked by a team. For him this is the most important aspect of all because the values of the employees are the values of the company.
Let’s start then with the people who have played a fundamental role in this story! Mario Baldo, with his recent retirement, has passed the baton as TWT CEO to the President Filippo Pellitteri. From 2016 to date, what has Rekord passed on to TWT? What are the most significant accomplishments that have favoured TWT’s growth?
“Different methods and manners of approaching issues have allowed us to exchange info and to improve, bringing together our different sets of know-how and our multiple experiences, because obviously there are different ways of “scoring a goal”. It is always highly educational to watch what my competitor does. Similarly, watching what we do and opening up from the inside to these various kinds of know-how has allowed us to merge the two and come out stronger.
The most important goals are the results obtained and the chance to offer technologically more performing products and to increase the services to our clientele. This is the result we have been striving towards, and almost five years after the birth of TWT we think that it is also the best way to pay homage toMario Baldo who has shared this positive debut with us”.
Mario Baldo, in assigning to Filippo Pellitteri the office of CEO, accepted pro tempore, defined him as being “a manager of great human and professional substance”. We ask Filippo Pellitteri, TWT’s most influential figure, how his experience in the sector began and what it means to occupy such a prestigious office.How will the company’s new organisation be structured, in addition to making him its President, as regards the roles within it?
“The most important aspect I would like to underline, as already hinted before, is that goals are not reached alone but together with a knowledgeable and motivated team.The people in charge of the various strategic divisions of the company are people directly involved as TWT partners: the commercial division is managed by Thomas Zuani, the engineering division by Massimiliano Zuani, the back office by Silvia Galvagni and production by Alberto Zuani. This means that each sector is run by a representative of the company directly involved as a company partner.
As for me, I have a long background. I started to work with Zuani when I was 20, starting as a simple sales representative and then I progressed towards becoming an area manager and then sales director and finallypresident”.
TWT is the result of the synergy of three historically important Trentino companies: Zuani, Rekord and Garniga, born from a new idea of enterprise that cherishes, shares and enhances the experience and know-how of the individual companies together with the values that characterised them. Is this a merge that has counted on the international market as the primary objective? And how is the new idea of enterprise implemented?
“The first objective was to consolidate the markets we were already familiar with so as not to lose our turnover because the danger, when merging two companies, is to lose part of the turnover caused by clients losing their bearings. So, consolidating what we already had was the first and most important goal for us.
Our merge helped fill the gaps we each had. Zuani was strong in Germany and Rekord well known in France. Together, we overawed the window manufacturing sector and today we are on a par with other European companies that are bigger thanks to their range of sectors engaged, while our strength lies in our specialisation in windows and doorsand our flexibility in designing and in the supply of different services that go beyond those of the standard tool. This is where we make the difference!
“Anyhow, in this sense the German mindset is highly useful! The one thing the Italian entrepreneur lacks –Mauro Zamberlan adds –and that instead is required in creating a company, is the capacity to use the word ‘us’ and not be individualists. There are lots of small companies that feel they are better than the rest. One needs a bit of humility and to understand where one stands with respect to the global market”.
“Think how the Homaggroup was created in Germany – says Pietro Ferrari, a veteran of the German market –they were all companies each with its own strong personality. All had the name of their founders. And yet they succeeded in putting these companies together and of making them cohabit. Today the Homaggroup is Homag and nothing else”.
The creation of a new identity is certainly not banal, however – explains Filippo Pellitteri – and brings with it the overall maturity of the way work is intended.Indeed, the new idea of enterprise is implemented by managing to give the market a highly technological product with the addition of services that help the client create his project and make him aware of the operating costs – said like this it seems a simple concept, but this passage was by no means simple.
The image we would like to portrayis that of a company that wishes to increasingly partake in the clients’ needs. That service that was once supplied in the form of ‘friendship’, as if it were a ‘gift’ – in actual fact, it is a specific competence and it is important to confirm that our quality has a cost – has now been structured by us and so now we supply it effectively with precision and rigour, but at a price, and this, we have observed, is a benefit for the client who sees it as proof of seriousness and of corporate identity.
In Italy especially there is the strong need for development of new product research. For this reason, we must be linked to the client’s project and not only to the tool that becomes a consequence, because in this context the service actually becomes the main feature. One must be careful, however. It’s ok to invent, but one must also test. There must be a project because Italians ‘fly’ with creativity but ideas must then prove to be achievable and reliable. In this context, German window manufacturers lead the way!
Anyway, we use our respective skills and we do the tests. We create concrete products because after all we must take on the clients’ problems, focus on the various situations and solve them”.
