Giuseppe Caprotti, Luigi Guaitamacchi and Nelson Rockefeller’s directives at Esselunga
The 5 commandments left by Nelson Rockefeller’s IBEC Americans, my apprenticeship as a distributor
Giuseppe Caprotti on Le Ossa dei Caprotti: ‘A book that allowed me to make peace with the past and with my father’. On 26 October, at Assolombarda Monza
I am grateful to jury president Gianna Parri for having been included among the finalists. Beyond the third place achieved, the support and appreciation of the jurors and readers in the room was comforting
The Caprotti family: my maternal grandfather Guido Caprotti Venosta, c. 1970s?
My grandfather Guido Venosta, the more introverted of the Venosta brothers, graduated from Cambridge and Pavia and worked all his life as an executive at Pirelli; in 1966 he became involved in the Italian Association for Cancer Research (today the Italian Foundation for Cancer Research - AIRC), which he transformed into Italy's largest private funding body in the fight against cancer. Initiatives that have made the history of fundraising for the non-profit world, such as the 'Health Oranges' and the 'Research Azaleas' (...), were born thanks to him.
Giuseppe Caprotti explorer in Yemen and his Arabic manuscripts at the Ambrosiana Library
Giuseppe Caprotti was born in Besana Brianza (MB) in the mid-19th century. One of the very few Westerners resident in Yemen, he established fruitful contacts with the local populations. In over 30 years of his stay, he amassed a rich and extremely valuable collection of manuscripts and antiquities. The most important part ended up in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan...
The Caprotti family and Coop: the ‘war’ on several fronts
(…) Let’s start thinking of a dossier that shows how, from both the members’ and the social point of view, cooperatives are enterprises like any other. It follows that the favourable conditions from which they benefit are state aid. We set up an internal working group and (…) gather all the necessary documentation to support our conviction. The dossier will then be taken to Brussels by Federdistribuzione and will change, at least in part, the taxation of cooperatives. In their defence even Massimo D’Alema is moving …
The Caprotti family and relatives: the formidable Aunt Virginia, sister of great-great-grandfather Giuseppe
Aunt Virginia was the family peacemaker at a time of great feuds: the good work of keeping at bay two men who were able to tear each other apart at work whether they were competitors or partners had to be continued successfully by spouses and nephews, as the two, in their older years, used to spend Christmas together and with relatives
From I to We: Human Resources
With the enormous development of the non-food part and the emergence of marketing, we create hundreds of jobs, to which more will be added in food purchasing and quality control. My rule is to move from 'I' to 'we': and results pay off, because an internal survey in 2003 conducted by CIRM shows that in two years the proportion of those declaring themselves 'satisfied' or 'very satisfied' has risen from 49 per cent to 72.1 per cent.
Presentation of the book “Le Ossa dei Caprotti” for Banca Generali, 23 October 2024
An exceptional evening for the quality of the speakers
The Caprotti family and Coop: the sale of Esselunga, Aldo Soldi and ‘Sickle and Cart’
... This news is almost contemporaneous with a proposal of mine, in October 2004, to buy the majority share of Esselunga, a proposal that was rejected. At this point there was talk of four other offers, in particular one from the American giant Walmart; and Aldo Soldi, since 2004 president of ANCC - Coop, the National Association of Consumer Cooperatives, also expressed interest in buying it, because a move into foreign hands would have been a disaster for the Italian food economy. An unwise move, which will be among the reasons why Bernardo will publish his book Sickle and Cart in 2007.
The Caprotti family and Coop: the ‘war’ on several fronts
(...) Let's start thinking of a dossier that shows how, from both the members' and the social point of view, cooperatives are enterprises like any other. It follows that the favourable conditions from which they benefit are state aid. We set up an internal working group and (...) gather all the necessary documentation to support our conviction. The dossier will then be taken to Brussels by Federdistribuzione and will change, at least in part, the taxation of cooperatives. Even Massimo D'Alema is moving in their defence but our victory, the fruits of which I will not be able to reap, is very important. (...)". (G. CAPROTTI, Le Ossa dei Caprotti. Una storia italiana, Milan 20243, pp. 149; 187 - 188; p. 269).
The Caprotti family and fabrics: the Manifattura logo, Max Huber, 1958
In the 1950s, Bernardo Caprotti family asked the great Swiss graphic designer Max Huber, who would later design the logo for Supermarkets then Esselunga, to create a new logo for his cotton mill as well. The concept of the design also started, as for Supermarkets, from the idea of the initial letter - the C - artfully elongated to contain the full name of the company; in another version, the name is moved to the body of the letter, and in the eye of the C jumps the new, stylised, ultra-modern little goat.
