When a Handshake Was No Longer Enough
A dream rarely grows in a straight line. Sometimes everything seems to move forward naturally. One meeting leads to the next. New ideas are welcomed with enthusiasm. The future seems to open before you. And then... almost without your realizing it... the world around you begins to change. Not because you are working less hard. Not because you believe less.
But because the rules on which you relied for years no longer remain the same. That is one of the most difficult lessons I learned as an entrepreneur. I had grown up in a business world where personal relationships were invaluable. You knew the manufacturer. You knew his family. You knew how his company had begun.
When he gave you his word, you knew what it meant. A promise had a face. To me, a handshake was as binding as a signature. That was how I had built my network over many years. Not with complicated contracts, but by being honest. By honoring agreements. And by always remaining available when a problem arose. Slowly, I felt that world beginning to change. The market became more cautious.
New competitors appeared, backed by substantial financial resources. Companies merged. Small businesses were absorbed into large groups. Decisions were made less and less often by the people I knew personally. They moved upward to management teams, boards of directors, and head offices sometimes located hundreds of miles away. The people with whom I had built relationships of trust over many years could still listen to me.
But they could no longer always decide on their own. The world was becoming larger. But at the same time, more distant. Contracts grew longer. Meetings became more complicated. Lawyers and financial advisers participated in decisions with increasing frequency. A simple agreement was suddenly preceded by several months of consultation. Where a personal conversation and a handshake had once been enough, there were now clauses. Conditions. Guarantees. And fine print. I understood why this was happening. Companies were growing. The stakes were increasing.
Responsibilities had to be defined legally. There was nothing inherently wrong with that. And yet it saddened me. Not because I opposed change, but because I feared that the human being behind the company was becoming more and more difficult to see. Throughout my career, I had believed that one first did business with a person, and only then with the person's company. Now it sometimes seemed that one first had to negotiate with a system before still being able to reach the person.
Technology too was evolving at an astonishing pace. What we had built with such conviction over many years had not suddenly become worthless. Quite the opposite.
Many of our ideas were being confirmed by the very direction in which the world was moving. But new possibilities followed one another ever more quickly. Computers became more powerful. Software changed. New systems appeared. What was innovative today could already be outdated tomorrow. That meant we had to continue investing. In development. In people.
In knowledge. In equipment. At the very moment when customers and manufacturers were becoming more cautious, technology was demanding that we move faster. It was a difficult contradiction. Large competitors could often invest on a scale that a company like ours struggled to match. We could not compete with them solely through financial power. Our strength lay elsewhere. In our knowledge of the ceramic industry. In our creativity. In our speed.
And above all, in the personal relationships we had built over many years. Marco saw every technological change as a new challenge. He wanted to understand what was becoming possible. How we could improve our systems. How we could take another step forward. Meanwhile, I searched for new contacts, new markets, and new collaborations.
When we sat together around the table, we rarely spoke about what we might lose. We spoke about what we could still build. That was who we were. We were builders. Not destroyers. But even builders need solid ground. And slowly, the ground beneath our company began to shift.
Not because of one particular person. Not because of a single bad decision.
But because several changes were taking place at the same time. The market was becoming more cautious. Technology was advancing ever faster. Competition was intensifying. And decision-making was becoming more distant. That was what made this period so difficult to understand. The crisis of 1981 had been harsh and visible. Then, I knew what I had lost and what I had to begin fighting for again. This time, the change was happening much more gradually. The rules were changing while we were still in the middle of the game.
I continued believing there was a solution to every problem. That faith had helped me throughout my life. But some circumstances cannot be changed simply by working harder. You can continue improving. You can invest in quality. You can build honest relationships. And yet you cannot fully control the direction of the market, the speed of technology, or the decisions of large groups. That realization was particularly difficult for me.
Not because I refused to see reality, but because giving up had never been part of my way of thinking. Today, I do not look back with bitterness on that changing world. It was not directed against us. It was simply following its own evolution. But we had to learn that the values with which we had built our company were no longer enough to protect it. Trust remained important. Honesty remained important. A person's word still held value in my eyes.
But clear agreements were also necessary. Structure. Financial protection. And a willingness to take account of a world in which not every decision was still made between two people. That did not mean I had to abandon my convictions. I did not have to become harder or more distrustful. I only had to understand that human warmth and business caution could coexist. To me, a handshake remained the beginning of every good collaboration.
But I had to learn that it could no longer carry all the foundations of a company by itself. The world had not made trust worthless. It had only taught me that, in order to last, trust too sometimes needs protection.