The story of an entrepreneur
The life and business of Filiberto Martinetto, from young apprentice to head of a textile group
The book that Filiberto Martinetto (textile businessman) has written is a memoir, and therefore history, but also contains teachings for both the present and the future. His memories aren’t hoarded away in drawers destined to be forgotten, but presented for more or less everyone in densely packed pages, at times almost naive and candid, at other severe, but never banal or false: the story of a business and of an entrepreneur. This volume, entitled Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama (Weaving Life: a dream for the warp, an idea for the weft), has recently gone to press.
It’s a diary-cum-book in some senses, a memoir in others, a manual for good business in still more. The autobiography of a pioneering textile industry businessman unfolds over around 200 pages, but it’s also a business history of the 20th century, the memoir of a determined individual who reconstructs the most notable occasions in his life, weaving work, companies, politics and family together, amid challenges, achievements and losses experienced, personal memories and reflections on what things mean in a changing world.
It all began on 14 November 1934 in the author’s hometown of San Francesco al Campo in the then Province of Turin. From that date, the story unfolds among childhood memories that soon turn into work memories and a great story that unfolds amid wars, periods of peace, the desire to achieve, challenges (many becoming triumphs), family joys, fears shared by all, great sorrows and dreams that Martinetto seeks to turn into reality step by step, succeeding for the most part. He started work as an apprentice textile worker at the age of 13 and never stopped, not even today aged nearly 90. Some of the best names in the national textile industry flow through his story, like Remmert, once the largest ribbon factory in Europe, which was bought and relaunched when it was on the brink of closure and which in a certain sense completes the profile of a group with several factories and locations in Italy and abroad.
But what flows through the book, more than anything else, is the life of a stubborn, visionary entrepreneur, together with that of a local community, which then extends to the big city (Turin, the city of big industry, is just a stone’s throw away) and then to Italy. It’s a story related on certain foundations, like professionalism and commitment, family, and the bond between your colleagues. On closer inspection, these characteristics are shared by thousands of other businessmen, by a business culture that arises every day and has in Martinetto’s pages one of its finest accounts.
Filiberto Martinetto’s book doesn’t claim to be able to teach business, isn’t intended as a manual for shrewd management. Nonetheless it succeeds in both endeavours: it teaches how to do good business by example. It should be read as it was written: simply.
Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama
Filiberto Martinetto
Neos Edizioni, 2023
The life and business of Filiberto Martinetto, from young apprentice to head of a textile group
The book that Filiberto Martinetto (textile businessman) has written is a memoir, and therefore history, but also contains teachings for both the present and the future. His memories aren’t hoarded away in drawers destined to be forgotten, but presented for more or less everyone in densely packed pages, at times almost naive and candid, at other severe, but never banal or false: the story of a business and of an entrepreneur. This volume, entitled Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama (Weaving Life: a dream for the warp, an idea for the weft), has recently gone to press.
It’s a diary-cum-book in some senses, a memoir in others, a manual for good business in still more. The autobiography of a pioneering textile industry businessman unfolds over around 200 pages, but it’s also a business history of the 20th century, the memoir of a determined individual who reconstructs the most notable occasions in his life, weaving work, companies, politics and family together, amid challenges, achievements and losses experienced, personal memories and reflections on what things mean in a changing world.
It all began on 14 November 1934 in the author’s hometown of San Francesco al Campo in the then Province of Turin. From that date, the story unfolds among childhood memories that soon turn into work memories and a great story that unfolds amid wars, periods of peace, the desire to achieve, challenges (many becoming triumphs), family joys, fears shared by all, great sorrows and dreams that Martinetto seeks to turn into reality step by step, succeeding for the most part. He started work as an apprentice textile worker at the age of 13 and never stopped, not even today aged nearly 90. Some of the best names in the national textile industry flow through his story, like Remmert, once the largest ribbon factory in Europe, which was bought and relaunched when it was on the brink of closure and which in a certain sense completes the profile of a group with several factories and locations in Italy and abroad.
But what flows through the book, more than anything else, is the life of a stubborn, visionary entrepreneur, together with that of a local community, which then extends to the big city (Turin, the city of big industry, is just a stone’s throw away) and then to Italy. It’s a story related on certain foundations, like professionalism and commitment, family, and the bond between your colleagues. On closer inspection, these characteristics are shared by thousands of other businessmen, by a business culture that arises every day and has in Martinetto’s pages one of its finest accounts.
Filiberto Martinetto’s book doesn’t claim to be able to teach business, isn’t intended as a manual for shrewd management. Nonetheless it succeeds in both endeavours: it teaches how to do good business by example. It should be read as it was written: simply.
Tessere la vita. Un sogno come ordito, un’idea come trama
Filiberto Martinetto
Neos Edizioni, 2023