Paolo Grandotto is the new Business Unit manager at Casadei Busellato. He has accepted a big challenge in a company whose business is focused on handicraft and small-medium businesses.
Paolo Grandotto is well-known: he had several and long experiences with many woodworking industry companies, so we were not so surprised to find him involved in this new challenge, called to guide an organization with plenty of peculiarities.
First of all, and we are sure that Grandotto will not mind, this company was guided for a decade by an experienced manager like Massimo Bobba, who impressed his stamp on the company.
“I found a business that had been managed very well: we must say that Massimo Bobba was in charge from the very start, since the two brands were merged into one organization, which he positioned in a specific market segment and expanded to significant revenue levels. It was a powerful progression, mostly due to the great dynamics he could generate in many countries and his commitment to create an efficient working group in all world regions; besides ensuring a high-quality organization, he also implemented a system to collect direct and valuable information to build the most effective sales strategies…”.
… and now it’s your turn…
“Yes, it’s up to me now“, Grandotto said with a smile. “On one hand, I can start building on solid foundations, on the other, there is still a lot to do to move further. We are a small business, very well organized, approaching a new season with the awareness that we have many cards to play, and we must consolidate the results already achieved. We have overcome the pandemic emergency, we are sailing the ship in the stormy weather caused by the Russian invasion in Ukraine, the increase in energy prices, the disruptions in raw material and component supplies. Right now, the companies of our size are more sensitive to market turmoils, and it takes a lot of passion and dedication to preserve the position we have conquered in many markets. I’ve been here for less than one year, but I can say that Casadei Busellato has emerged from two very challenging years thanks to the efforts of our salesforce and dealers, who faced the challenge and made investments of their own. No one surrendered to easy complaints, and everyone bet on the future, together with us: a few of them took big risks, as they believed in their own work and in Casadei Busellato. We also took our chances, we faced the challenge and we never stopped, even when orders seemed to decrease constantly.
We continue to launch production batches to be always ready, being confident that the trend would soon turn positive. And that’s what happened”.
Are you happy with your decision?
“You mean if I am happy with the role I have accepted? Definitely, yes. This is a sector I have learned to know during my longstanding experience in this industry, though it was not easy to accept, because it meant to move from a manufacturer of big custom plants to a more industrial organization with “serial” production. And probably, that’s the reason why I decided to move to Thiene: the opportunity to live a different experience, to see what it means to have an all-round view of a company and all its problems.
I found a strong team with solid experience, and an even greater desire to look ahead. Our current turnover is approximately 18 million euros with an 80 percent export share; besides Italy, we are doing well in the United States, France and Belgium. In many countries we operate through exclusive dealers, very similar to direct subsidiaries, single-brand resellers who are essential for our success”.
What about your expectations for 2023?
“We are optimistic, and we think the current year is not void of complexities, which I don’t consider impossible to deal with. We have a rich book of orders, and we are working to remove all possible barriers. We are dealing with longer than expected delivery times for components, but we are not scared, as we have adopted different strategies that give us some peace of mind for the near future. I believe we need the capacity and the possibility to plan production in advance, we must work to have more materials in stock, so that we can respond faster to customer demand; but to do that, we must deploy methods and visions that are totally different from the past, we must shift the time axis that has always regulated our work.
Each day we get positive signals, even if doubts and question marks have not vanished: many variables might affect the situation negatively, speculations that impact our daily business, but so far, we believe the winds of crisis might blow softer than we fear.
For Casadei Busellato, 2023 will be an important year of transition: we have set ambitious goals and we are identifying the most effective approaches to achieve them together with our dealers. We keep working intensively on new products, we are focusing on costs to improve our performance and to find benefits that help us generate new dynamics…”.
“We have a significant advantage – Grandotto continued – a comprehensive catalog from A to Z, from small machines for hobbyists to advanced working centers. Traditionally, we are positioned in the mid-range market, we don’t have the competitiveness of Chinese or Taiwanese manufacturers, nor the unique technology offered by industry giants, who can leverage a wide product range and accurate pricing strategies”.
Within the breadth and width of your catalog, which technologies are offering the best results?
“Some products are livelier than others: the machines that most contribute to our results are numerical control working centers, panel saws and edgebanding machines. These are the business segments where we are working harder to secure an even bigger share of market demand; at present, thirty percent of our revenues come from classical machines, thirty percent from working centers, and the rest from advanced machines such as sanding, edgebanding and panel sawing machines at the high-end of the market.
With such a wide portfolio, it’s not easy to acquire new market shares, but we know there are still many requests that we could or should meet, and that’s our mission for the near future”.
by Luca Rossetti
