Daniel Giaconia

My name is Daniel Giaconia and I was born in Milan, among the leather.

Literally.

My mom always told me that, if it hadn't been for a colleague who took her to the hospital at the first contractions, I would have been born among the leather pallets, in the company warehouse that my parents had laboriously opened.

This story has always made me feel predestined: leather and belts will be your life, I always told myself.

Instead, in conjunction with my official entry into the company, I gave vent to my true passion, that of rallying: if you have never been in a rally car, you cannot understand the adrenaline you feel.

But soon I had to reduce this great passion of mine to a hobby.

It wasn't easy.

In fact, when I was twenty, a few years after I joined the company, my grandparents left within a few days of each other and this loss was too big a blow for my father.

He had a crisis and left the company.

Suddenly 60 people found themselves alone, without a captain.

I had to do something. I didn't want my father's labors to vanish like snow in the sun.

I decided to take the lead.

Of course, I wasn't the best person to replace him; I had neither his experience nor his pulse and I remember that as a very hard period, in which I made all the mistake I could have been done.

Here the teaching of rallying was fundamental: unlike track races, rallying never offers you the perfect condition. Ascent, descent, dirt road, dirt, mud, snow, rain. You never have the ideal and constant condition, you have to rely on your abilities to face the situation that you are facing.

And you have to do it fast. A second is what makes the difference between a ditch or the finish.

You have to work harder than the others, always question yourself and above all, you have no excuses: the strongest driver always wins. And to be the strongest driver you also need to have the best team.

Sport has taught me a lot and it is no coincidence that there are many entrepreneurs who come from the world of competitive sport: you recognize them by the more aggressive attitude that very often leads them to be the best.

But I don't want to dwell too much on my life, in the end I am one like many.

But if I have to sum up one of the most important lessons that the rally has left me is that you must always be in control; and to be in control, communication is essential.

Think if a navigator and his pilot had communication problems ... would they be able to cross the finish line?

No.

And unfortunately, I also experienced firsthand the negative consequences of a lack of communication inside and outside a company.

Answers given late and calls that no one answers are just two of the many examples that could be given. And this inevitably creates a slowdown in operations and work management; if we add to this that most companies work on huge numbers, it goes without saying that they will never have a personal communication with the customer.

Let's face it, who has the possibility to assign a figure to each client?

And communication is not just the Achilles' heel for the vast majority of manufacturing companies. If you work on large numbers, being obliged to keep costs as low as possible, even the workmanship and the quality of the products suffer.

And I know, because my family's company has been my gym: I have acquired indispensable and precious skills and knowledge like gold on the artisan tradition of leather goods, but I have also experienced how it is now essential to have to change your concept of work.

But I don't want to anticipate anything, you will find everything in the section “My working method”.

Now you know a little about me and I can't wait to get to know your project,

your story and the belts you intend to produce!

Do you want to know how to start this journey with me?