Eng. Gabriele Miccini

Eng. Gabriele Miccini

Giessegi SpA: “THE STORY OF A DREAM”

Sometimes recurring dreams scare us, other times they serve as a stimulus, a way to exorcise fears and to seek, with more determination, the key to open the closed door.

“…as a young man, I often dreamed of not being able to finish university, the fear that there would no longer be money in the family to study gripped me…”

And there was indeed little money for Eng. Gabriele Miccini, now patron and CEO of Giessegi SpA in Appignano, who as a student spent his evenings building accordions for the ancient Antonelli company in Castelfidardo in order to continue to afford his studies.

A beautiful story, that of the Engineer, almost like an American dream, starting from an office set up in a garage, when, freshly graduated in electronic engineering, he began selling and installing the first software packages for business accounting, on behalf of a very small newly established company.

But the IT sector was growing “…I drove around all day in my Fiat 126 through the Marche countryside, to visit as many companies as possible…”

and in a few years it offered him the opportunity to get to know many companies, from different categories, and to enter, as a consultant, into their mechanisms and organizations, to the point of becoming aware of their 360-degree functioning.

As time passed, among all the companies he knew, a furniture sector company proposed him to work exclusively as a programmer: the experience was there and Eng. Miccini did not hesitate to accept what he saw as a more stable job and professional growth.

But things soon began to not go too well, and the Group he worked for entered a crisis, so much so that one of the two companies that were part of it, Stacchetti, closed permanently, while for the second, Giessegi, a supplier stepped in who, as a creditor, offered and managed to take it over.

They were looking for volunteers to pioneerly form the new Board of Directors, and faced with many refusals, they finally asked for the availability of the electronic Engineer, the latest arrival: “…I did not hesitate and immediately said yes, accepting the new challenge…”, Miccini recounts.

From that moment on, that engineer began to work, day and night, started to put all his energy, hopes, and dreams into that project, but the efforts were almost immediately rewarded because Giessegi’s slow and inexorable growth began.

The company that 30 years ago had 70 employees and a turnover of about 4 million euros today has 420 employees and will probably end 2015 with a turnover of around 100 million euros: alongside the core business, which is the production of children’s bedrooms, there is now the production of furniture for living rooms, bedrooms for homes and hotels.

The brand is now growing both in terms of distribution and national and international image: the style choices, the design, have made Giessegi furniture unique and immediately recognizable, and the use of mass media, from television to radio, from social networks to the most important furniture magazines, has amplified all this.

During these decades of continuous growth, the Marche-based company has also made important investments from a real estate point of view, and when we ask Eng. Miccini what drove him to consistently choose Manini Prefabbricati SpA as a loyal supplier, he smiles laconically and responds “…if I’ve always and anyway chosen the same company… there must be a reason… let’s say I always aim for the best….”

It’s 2015 and Eng. Gabriele Miccini has become the sole owner of Giessegi Mobili SpA; now – he reveals to us – “…the recurring dreams are different… I dream of not being able to guarantee continuous growth for my company and my employees, just as when I was young I dreamed of not being able to finish my studies…”.

Sometimes recurring dreams scare us, other times they serve as a stimulus, a way to exorcise fears and to seek again that energy, that determination that allowed Eng. Gabriele Miccini to truly realize “his big dream”.