Portrait

MAGGIE LAKE, CNN INTERNATIONAL PRESENTER: CNN’s Monita Rajpal sat down with Bulgari CEO Francesco Trapani, and she began by asking him whether it’s been a challenging year so far. 

It has been very challenging, for, I would say, two reasons. One is because retail sales are certainly weak following the last quarter of last year and also because in the first year – in the first quarter of this year, the trade is de-stocking pretty aggressively. Then, wholesale business is down a lot. 



How is this translating into everyday operations? Are we talking job cuts? Are we talking store closures?

Yes. We have focussed a lot on the efficiencies in general. That means to reduce our cost base, to reduce investments and to of course reduce also the inventory or working capital, if you want. Of course, all this targets up are for the full year 



From the man who’s at the top to looking down to try to make it very efficient, and when we are looking at, you know, job losses and trying to close stores, how does that make you feel? What kind of a head space does it put you in?

Not as happy as I used to be in the past. Of course, it’s a challenging activity. It’s not fun at all, because, as you said, people are losing jobs. Let’s say, in our company, we have one lucky thing is that we can, to reduce the number of employees, we can count a lot on rotation. We are blocking our turnover. We don’t get new people, and we shop for people internally. Then the real layoffs at Bulgari are still very small. But still, it’s not a happy period. Of course, we have to go through this period and think about the long term.



When do you think you’ll come out of this period?

Very difficult answer, to be honest with you. We are hoping that things at the end of the year will be better, because in 2010, the recession will end, and we hope that the economy will start again growing. Maybe very slowly, of course. We are not expecting a bullish 2010 or 2011, but still we think that there are reasons to think that next year is going to be a bit better than this year.

What lessons are you learning from this difficult time?

Lessons I am – the lesson is that we were probably too optimistic in the past, thinking that cycles were over and that the economy was going to grow eternally. This is not the case, cannot be the case. We have to accept that we have cycles, with periods in which things are good and periods in which we have to, you know, live with a tougher situation and be able to manage also in the tough situation these kind of companies.

CNN International -Monita Rajpal