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.
So, three top quality companies in the window and door manufacturing wood processing tools sector, three “made in Rovereto” brands renowned throughout Italy and across the world! How does one transfer the value of three different sets of know-how into the product?
“We are working to unify the product using the know-how of the three companies, in the sense that we come out with a new product in 2020 that we will analyse more closely further on. This regards the technology”. “In actual fact, we talk about the final artefact as well as of the tool –Mauro Zamberlan adds – sometimes the artefact is more important and sometimes it’s the tool, because the artefact already comes from the client”.
Three different but complementary companies that today run side by side towards a new challenge, that of bringing the wholly Italian Trentino excellency to the rest of the world through the TWT brand. Which markets have responded most favourably to your offering?
“Certainly the Italian market, a market we are very fond of. Internationally speaking, I would place Germany first place, followed by France, Spain and Scandinavia in which high tech and more complete services are required. We are talking European markets here, because in non-EU countries they do not feel the need for European windows and doors and because they lack a ‘tailored’ product culture”.
“Indeed, they have a completely different approach to building construction –Mauro Zamberlan adds– and that applies to the whole sector, from skyscrapers to prefab homes”.
“As far as skyscrapers are concerned, in Europe too they install other types of windows that are not made of wood –Filippo Pellitteri intervenes – which means that our work mainly concerns the restoration of the existing pool of buildings and so we are called to build tools that create frames that were popular 40, even 150 years ago, which means truly minimal –indeed like the current trend of minimal outdoor windows – although it is a fact that for the current designs we have had to increase the thickness to ensure better acoustic performance, energy saving and so on”.
Can we say that the merging of Garniga, Rekord and Zuani has led to the creation of the most important Italian company in the production of wood and wood/aluminium window processing tools, and to a sector-leading company in Europe?
“Three years into our merger, I can confirm that TWT is the largest Italian company of its sector and that in the same time there has also been a transformation in the sales, in the sense that while once we sold tools also to smaller clients with limited investments, while now unfortunately the smaller companies are shutting down and the medium-sized and large companies are becoming increasingly larger in size.
These clients want to engage a company that can assure them continuity. Clients no longer purchase machinery from a supplier that is smaller than them. There must be alignment. This is what has convinced us to perform the merger by adding up our expertise and by channelling it into the same specialisation: an updated vision of enterprise that has brought us higher lever orders.
It is a business strategy based on an infinite number of synergies. As an example, we can mention the synergy created at a fair between TWT and Leuco France, because next week we will be in Lyon to share a stand with Leuco: they represent the furniture sector and we represent the windows and doors sector”.
For TWT, the Research & Development division is nothing less than crucial! A commitment well represented by the new cut geometries presented in the last edition of Ligna in Hannover of May last year. On the occasion of the same fair, the launch in 2020 of a new concept of tool for the wood and door window market was anticipated, and we ask a preview of it imagining that it will be presented in the upcoming fairs, hoping that the Xilexpo of Milan remains confirmed considering that unfortunately the FensterbauFrontale/Holzhandwerk in Nuremberghas been postponed because of the Covid-19 virus pandemic.
“It is a new process! We have talked about this on the German journal BAU which we use for the German market, as we do with you for the Italian market. We were having dinner with these German journalists and we were talking about 4.0 companies and then we ended the evening saying that we would meet again in the morning to visit the TWT production division.
That is when I suddenly realised that the visit should be made at night, because a 4.0 company cannot be visited during the daytime when it is full of operators, while it made more sense to visit it in the nighttime when nobody is there and the company works on its own! I launched the idea, saying: “Today we work until 11.30 p.m./midnight” and then I accompanied the journalists on their nighttime visit, a totally new experience. Indeed the 2020 advertising campaign consists precisely in this, in showing a production that works on its own and in showing where TWT technology stands”.
