My sister Violetta was born a year and a half after me, in 1962. We are therefore quite close in age, and so we share a large part of our lives, childhood in Albiate then in Milan, in Forte dei Marmi, skiing, playing with cousins; we stand shoulder to shoulder when our parents separate and we are entrusted to our father, and to the care of grandmother Marianne and the omnipresent nannies who bring us up with very disciplined, strict and controlled affection. We always see our mother, Bernardo will never go so far as to prevent us from being with her at least for the holidays (and, with the laws of the time, he could have done so).
Violetta is intelligent, quick-witted, and her talents become a kind of weapon in Bernardo’s mouth: “Violetta is smarter than me, ‘she’s a future businesswoman'”he says. Instead I am referred to as ‘the thinker’. I don’t dislike the term, but I believe that Bernardo basically despises the literati, journalists, and professors, whom he lumps together with the left-wing intelligentsia his ex-wife Giorgina frequented (…)’. (p. 93).
Like me, Violetta has a character that is easily aroused, but perhaps she is less ‘diplomatic’, if she does not like something she does not hide it: for example, she cannot stand our father’s second wife, Giuliana Albera, and although she is younger she will be the first to leave for boarding school [Le Rosey] in Switzerland, in the mid-1970s, where I will join her the following year.
After graduating, she graduated with honours from theLuigi Bocconi University in 1986, ‘with a thesis on the stock market quotations of family-owned companies’ (see the Violetta Caprotti Foundation website, https://fondazioneviolettacaprotti.org/) ). At the discussion of the thesis – a photograph is here at the bottom of the page -, which was supervised by Jody Vender (founder of Sopaf, which was one of the first companies in Italy to operate in Private Equity and Venture Capital), four of us attended: our mother Giorgina, myself, Enrico [Chicco] Marcora and Luigi [Gigi] Giannuzzi. Our father is not here.
Violetta’s first job after graduating was at Banca Euromobiliare, but she soon landed at Esselunga, where she encountered, albeit less violently, the same problems as me in dealing with Bernardo’s difficulties in fitting into the company mechanisms and the hostility of the ‘old guard’ who, like the patron, did not like change.
In 1994, our chance finally arrived. On 13 October ‘I was entrusted with the marketing and communication direction. Working with me will be my sister Violetta, who is appointed head of the communications office, with the task of coordinating the promotion of the company’s products and image. For us, brother and sister who had grown up together without a mother from the earliest years of life (…), one of the happiest phases opens, because together we will be able to achieve results that will change our father’s company forever’. (p. 165).
We work in synergy: the products selected by the marketing department are passed on to Violetta, who works with the advertising agency to study the packaging [of private-label products] and prepare the material for the launch, but is also actively involved in ‘non-food’, studying the assortment and shelf positioning.
“Another important innovation is the introduction of the loyalty card, which will be called Fidaty (…). my sister and Giancarlo Pelarin fly to the United States to study how it works. When (…) they return we prepare the project, creating an ad hoc structure (…)’ (p. 168), and the loyalty card for the collection of points, which entitles you to discounts and prizes, is enormously successful because it acts on a double communicative track, trust me that I reward you not only with the quality and choice of my products, but also recognise you as part of a big ‘family’ and give you gifts.
Violetta unfortunately left after a decade or so, and so, when the atmosphere started to heat up in the early 2000s, ‘we found ourselves fighting battles with our father in isolation from each other. For a while she lives in New York, then returns to Italy, but we no longer share our working days as we did before, when we revolutionised marketing and communication together. (…).” (p. 226).
The events are well known and, fortunately, over. Violetta now manages her estate and her Foundation.
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External Bibliography:
Violetta Caprotti Foundation website
Below, in the last photo, from the left, behind Violetta: our mother Giorgina, myself, Enrico “Chicco” Marcora, Luigi “Gigi” Giannuzzi.
