“We are a network of companies”

Mr Nespoli, how far progressed is the European unification process for decorating tools?
Alessandro Nespoli: If the products we sell in Europe are not identical, this is only due to cultural reasons and it is a fact that traditional products are the ones still conserving differences throughout the different countries. I am thinking, for example, about paint brushes. More modern or recently introduced products are much more homogeneous in the different markets. This unification process you mention is not a wish of the consumers, but the result of the phenomenon of expansion and concentration of DIY chains that, in the search for efficiency and simplification, are offering the same items everywhere. Having said this, the unification process you mention is active for sure, and will continue to be so, but is far from being completed. I would add that eventually the end consumer will just indulge it.

If we consider the habits of DIYers, these differences have to do with the typical weather conditions of the region they live in and as a consequence of the moment when the consumption takes place. Differences in habits have also to do with the difference in the style of the houses (intensive use of bricks for façade for example or wood, for example) and as a consequence of the types of painting projects that are undertaken. In the south of Europe wall paint projects are by far the most important. In the North and in Central Europe, projects concerning wood treatment have more of an importance.

We are all exposed to the same trends and fashions. This is for sure contributing to the creation of a common taste for colours and materials and standardisation of certain habits. But a house in Mallorca will never be like a house in Helsinki and a certain degree of adaptation to the market will be always necessary.

We are truly "global". The Nespoli Group is a complex entity. The image that is representing us in the best way is not the one in which a central holding is controlling and managing the peripheral subsidiaries, but the one of a network of companies acting in a coordinated way. We are German in Germany, French in France, Spanish in Spain and so on... In our philosophy a country is never seen as an export market, but as a…