The RiFRA case: from furniture factory to a brand in 40 countries
I was invited to the University of Milano-Bicocca, Faculty of Economics, to present the case of my company. Here I tell it the way I tell it in the classroom: with the dates, the numbers and the mistakes. It is the case from which the method I teach was born.
- 1930 and 1970. My grandfather starts working wood; the company is founded. Sales through distribution: catalogue, agents, shops.
- 2009. The generational handover coincides with the crisis. I buy the shares with a partner, financed by a bank. Our only loss-making year.
- 2010-2013. Distribution collapses, the internet explodes. Competitors turning over 10–15 million close down. We change model: high end, brand, direct.
- 2014. Kitchens join the catalogue: within four years they are 50% of turnover. In 2016, kitchen of the year for design.
- From 2017. Company-owned showrooms in Milan, then Rome and New York; more than 40 countries; the method becomes a book and a school.
Where we start
I was born into a family of small business owners: my father and his brothers always ran a furniture manufacturing company in Brianza. My grandfather started working wood in 1930; the company was founded in 1970. As a child I used to wander around the factory. After the Cattolica university and a master's in marketing I joined the company: a year in the technical department, then export manager, with an overseas network to build and 183 nights away from home in one year. I was the only one in the family with no shares.
The model was the same as everyone else's: sell through distribution. You make a product, a catalogue, hire an agent, and sell to people with a shop on the high street, who sell on to private customers or other intermediaries. It worked until distribution went into crisis.
2009: the handover in the middle of the crisis
The generational handover coincided with the 2009 crisis. In Italy the heavy blow came in 2011, but we sold a lot in the United States and Russia, and we felt it straight away: the only year we closed the accounts at a loss. There was discontent among the shareholders, and I found myself doing something I didn't want to do: taking control and buying the shares. On my own advice and that of my team. A working group, several banks approached, a major Italian bank that financed us. December 2009: I, my partner and a third person took control.
2010 and 2011 were the years of the distribution crisis and the explosion of the internet. Stormy years. Our competitors, companies turning over 10, 12, 15 million selling only through distribution, have largely closed today. We grew while the market was in free fall, and from reflecting on that model came the seven-step system I teach today.
The brand: the answers we gave ourselves
Why does the company exist? To express the best of the Brianza tradition and of Milan design around the world. What did it bring to the market? Product quality and reliability. I couldn't use the founding year, because I had two. Geography, yes: Milan, which is a brand, like Paris for cosmetics. The craft: joinery and finishes. From these answers came the art direction and the collections. And the payoff, which we went to Al Ries to have written: category, differentiating idea, market segment. With a lower-case “i”, which I didn't like, because the Americans have to be able to pronounce it.
2014: the collection that changed the company
Kitchens joined the catalogue in 2014, presented in Paris in 2013 and in Milan in 2014. Within four years they were 50% of turnover. The signature kitchen, entirely shaped at 45 degrees, worked and finished by hand, with a six-centimetre plinth, became the company's visual: in 2016 it was voted kitchen of the year for design by a jury of architects, beating brands that have been making kitchens for forty years. And it started circulating on social media a year before the Milan showroom opened: the first sale in the showroom was to a couple who came specially from Novara, €70,000, customers from Facebook.
The key was a single category, kitchen and bathroom: same design, same material, five collections in parallel. I sell the kitchen, which brings the customer into the showroom, and then the bathroom in the same finish. The customer has one delivery and one invoice, and the same style in the kitchen and the bathroom.
From 2017: the showrooms and the world
The first company-owned showroom was in Milan, in the Quadrilatero, on the second floor, with parking underneath: it worked better than expected, but after three years of sowing. Then Rome, with the same mood recreated by the art direction, and New York. Modena, which was a problem, we turned into an asset through an acquisition. Today the products are in more than 40 countries on four continents: from the 40 suites of a five-star hotel in Singapore to 180 bathroom units in a Manhattan skyscraper, to villas in Florida that end up in American magazines thanks to the clients' publicity.
Before teaching the system, I applied it: why, brand, marketing, distribution, publicity, advertising, sales. In 2018 it became a book, in 2019 a school. This is the case I present at university, and it is the reason I don't talk theory in the classroom.
From my book Direct from Milano and my classroom courses. Figures and examples updated to September 2026.
One live webinar a month.
One topic, questions from the business owners who join, answers without sales slides. It's free and in Italian, and it's the simplest way to get to know us.
See the next webinar →