BACKGROUND RONCATO was established in the late fifties. Antonio and Giovanna (the founders and parents of today’s owners) both came from families tied to the land, which was typical of the social tissue of the Venetian hinterland in post-war years. Also typically the young married couple were always ready to fight and make sacrifices not only to build up the conditions for family growth based on more certainties, but also to achieve social emancipation purely through their hard work. Times were hard, life offered few comforts in a poor land, in a poor nation, but in the midst of this poverty the values of entrepreneurship, courage and sacrifice with regard to work flourished in this case, as for most of the Veneto people with their true pioneering spirit. The result was the carpenter with his first three or four employees made doors, windows, frames in general and, if there was the chance, also some lovely furniture, bedrooms..... all hand made or with the first woodworking machines..... and the wife kept the accounts, careful to collect payments and even more careful over spending.
Fabio was the firstborn and grew up in this environment; he too experienced the poverty, but also the cheerfulness and light-heartedness of that simple world made up of artisans and country folk who ensure that you “get a good head on your shoulders” by working. That’s what he did: he was still a boy when he started helping his parents and shared their business worries until they became his own. In this way the love for “work in itself” became inevitable and the search for satisfaction was appeased by the quality results of the actual work and not just by the economic results.
When his brothers Remo and Damiano entered the firm they had both been duly educated. The former took charge of the administrative sector and the latter the technical-production sector and RONCATO, by that time a company, developed even more, opening up to new markets with new types of product such as furnishings for bars, ice-cream shops and supermarkets.
The subsequent commercial and production expansion persuaded the Roncato brothers to organise the firm in three separate divisions, each with its own brand:
- “RONCATO DOORS” for the window and door frame sector; - “RONCATO COLLECTION“ for the production of tables, chairs, cabinets and furnishing accessories; - “RONCATO GALLERY” to contain the artistic works by Arnaldo Gamba that have been made in RONCATO using the firm’s production systems.
QUALITY OR QUANTITY? A dilemma that has often arisen in this Veneto family of entrepreneurs, as in others. It is a dilemma that normally tends to set the two values in alternative and partly opposing directions of development: the first intent on keeping the intrinsic qualities of craftsmanship and the second necessarily aiming at highly industrialised mass production. The first direction is undoubtedly in RONCATO’s DNA, but with features that clearly distinguish it from a normal artisan production complex. These features are: continuous search for innovation, product culture and attention paid to customer satisfaction.
SEARCH FOR INNOVATION In RONCATO the preservation of values of craftsmanship does not mean that traditional or traditionalistic positions are maintained at all costs, but instead means using the best that craftsmen can offer to produce continually new and modern ideas, defined individually while following an intensely creative path. The doors with continuous frame are a shining example of technical/functional innovation allowing new installation methods that give an outstanding aesthetic result of linear essentiality without corrective trims. The decorative doors and even more so the artistic doors testify to the iron will to seek a “door culture” whereby the door will finally be considered within the scope of furnishing design or interior decoration instead of being relegated to being simply part an unfeeling building specification that remains outside the furnishing design concept.
RONCATO’s refusal of “traditionalism” is also very clear in its choice of modern sales and production management methods. Much use is made of IT tools both in technically defining the products and in the continual updating of customers through the website. PRODUCT CULTURE Manufacturing skill and overall care and attention in the work are not enough at Roncato, where they prefer to make products distinguished by a certain cultural content. An example of this can be seen in the fact that Fabio Roncato undertook the difficult restoration of choirs and fittings in general in important Florentine churches in order to get to know, learn and make his own the taste for superior finishes. The desire to combine working quality with product culture has led to the Roncato family establishing a very close working relationship with the architect Arnaldo Gamba. The result of all this has been to develop three divisions “RONCATO DOORS”, “RONCATO COLLECTION” and “RONCATO GALLERY” with outstanding features of artistic craftsmanship.
ATTENTION PAID TO CUSTOMER SATISFACTION Taking care of the customer for RONCATO firstly means understanding his needs, always being ready to carry out preliminary on-the-spot inspections, measurements and whatever else is necessary. Doors and windows are always delivered and installed by the retailer’s or the firm’s own fitters, who have an identification document and are trained to behave in a properly educated way in full respect of the persons and the property that they find in the customer’s home. The work always ends with a strict inspection and with the filling in of a “satisfaction” form signed by the customer and the chief fitter.
AND THE FIRM’S IDENTITY? Throughout its growth RONCATO has always opted for work offering the opportunity of conveying “originality”. Even in jobbing work, when taken out of need, in which others obviously dealt with the marketing of the product, the approach to any problem, relations with the company that had acquired the business and the contribution made to the initiative were so enthusiastic and characteristic as to single out a precise and recognisable attitude. When RONCATO was finally able to approach the market directly with its own products and its own brand name, it certainly did not “copy” (as most do in these cases) paths that had already been taken, which even though easier are far less satisfying. On the contrary the firm preferred to test itself with new and absolutely original types of product, creating a business that had to make its own way but where “faith” in its own business instinct became the only true engine. Although this outlook is supported by correct analyses of sales strategies, it springs from the very character of the Roncatos, from their temperament that is marked by the passion for “the work in itself” and by the creative actions that this passion induces.
If RONCATO - believes in craftwork but not traditionalism,
- is innovative but not industrial,
- is creative yet organised,
- is split up into divisions yet is a small concern
how can these characteristics be united in a single condensed identity?
The resulting company “concept” is “ATELIER RONCATO” and its “mission” can only be: “to produce highly distinctive furnishing elements”.
Doors, tables, cabinets and pictures can therefore all be in the same place not just because of a family feeling, but because they are actors in a singular show whose production may be entrusted, case by case, to the interior decorator of that moment, whether architect or enthusiastic end user. They do not just act as a whole, but each individual product can communicate with the rest. Putting a Roncato product into a room, whether it is a picture, a table, a tray, etc., even a door, means inserting a telling sign. A sign full of life in a dwelling distinguished by that symbolic strength that has been lost due to the effect of production standardisation, which tends to make everything dreary and equal and forgets those values which make the house of every person predominantly “his”, that is, in some way unique and able to represent him.
Going to the ATELIER RONCATO is like going to the tailor, not because he makes the things “to measure”, but because he makes them to fit the emotional needs of the person; in other words he makes them in such a way that they become personal, capable of wakening up the numbed sensitivities of every person by relating not only to his functional and material needs but also to his fantasy and imaginary world, satisfying the interior of his aesthetic desires.
