A Company Built on Trust
When people ask me today what a company's most valuable asset is, they usually expect me to answer: money. Buildings. Or technology. My answer has always been different. Trust. Everything I built in my life was born from trust. A manufacturer entrusted me with representing his company because he believed in me. A customer placed an order because he trusted my word.
A colleague chose to build the future with us because he or she believed in our vision. Trust cannot be bought. It must be earned. Again, every day. That is how I always worked. To me, a handshake had real meaning. When I gave someone my word, I felt morally bound. Even when nothing was written down.
Perhaps that was an old-fashioned way of doing business. But it was the way that suited the man I was. During my many journeys to Italy, I noticed that, over time, manufacturers no longer regarded me only as their representative. They asked for my opinion. About their products. Their organization. Their marketing. And their new collections. Sometimes they even asked me for advice about decisions that were not really my responsibility at all.
I considered that a great compliment. Not because I thought I knew everything, but because they valued my honesty. When I thought something had been done well, I said so. And when I thought it could be improved, I said that too. It was not always easy.
But over the years, I had learned that honesty is ultimately worth far more than fine words without meaning. I tried to preserve the same openness within Piramedia. My office door was almost always open. Anyone could come to see me. With a question. An idea. Or a problem. I never believed in walls between people. We were colleagues.
But first and foremost, we were human beings working together toward the same goal. I still remember one evening when almost everyone had already gone home. Marco and I were the only ones still there. A fine rain was falling outside. The showroom was wrapped in silence. The light reflected in the Pyramid's glass walls. We sat facing each other, each holding a cup of coffee. No hands on keyboards anymore. No visitors.
No ringing telephone. Only a father and his son. Marco looked across the now-empty showroom and suddenly asked:
"Dad... do you think we're really changing anything?"
I looked around me. At the collections. The desks. The computers still humming softly in the background. Then I replied:
"I don't know."
He looked at me in surprise. I smiled.
"What I do know," I told him, "is that every day we try to do things a little better than the day before. If we continue that way, the future will tell us whether we truly changed anything."
Marco nodded. Many of our conversations were like that. They rarely concerned what the company might bring us personally. We spoke about ideas. People. Possibilities. That faith united us. But when you build a company on trust, you almost naturally assume that others view the world in more or less the same way. That is not always the case. Every person carries their own dreams. Their own fears.
Their own responsibilities. And sometimes their own interests as well. That is not a reproach. It is simply reality. We too would eventually learn that lesson. Not because the people around us were bad, but because life sometimes confronts everyone with choices for which no one is truly prepared.
When I think back on that evening in the Pyramid today, I no longer see an entrepreneur. I see a father who was proud of his son. And a son who sincerely believed he could leave something beautiful behind with his father. That image means far more to me than any professional success. Companies can disappear. Buildings can be sold. Computers become obsolete.
But that conversation between a father and son... I still carry it with me every day. And perhaps that is the greatest treasure Piramedia left me.