Point-7 is based in Italy. Italy was the first European country strongly hit by the coronavirus, with the first coronavirus case on January 31, 2020. Since then Italy is trying everything to flatten the curve of cases. We managed to catch up with Andrea Cucchi, head of the Italian sail company, and reached him at his home office.
“What will be our future, is what we do today!”
Andrea Cucchi – Head of Point-7
Continentseven: Ciao Andrea, how are you doing and how do you deal with the corona crisis?
Andrea Cucchi: We are based in Italy, so we were the first country in Europe to be strongly hit and to react at the same time. As the country realized how serious the situation was, the government locked us down, and each day there are more restrictions. We saw the mistakes we did as a country, and how the others were doing the same, just a few days later. Every day things change and we need to adapt rapidly. We all need to act as we are all infected, take all the precautions needed to help win against the Covid-19. This is to respect the doctors and nurses, who are working like crazy to try saving the weak part of the population. These are sad moments, but we need to stay positive and hopefully we get our summer back as soon as possible.
How do you make it through the crisis?
We started working from home from day 1, but we are used to this also. Some of our departments are already doing a lot of home office, as people can concentrate better on their task, or because we are often on the road. Being an international company we are also located in different parts of the world. We all love what we do in Point-7, and therefore everyone is responsible to their job good, no matter where they are. Only our logistic manager is still going to the office every day, to ship out the orders to our dealers and online clients. Deliveries may take a few days longer due to the transport check points between countries, but for the moment we are fully functional. From Wednesday to Sunday, we might not ship out, as our government will give us a bigger shut down. We finally should be in the week were the trend can shift to improvements finally.
Do you see any damage already in your company?
Businesswise everyone will have their impacts, but I guess we will see this as we go towards the season. Now it’s hard to predict when everything will get back to normal and is not for us to predict. Not even scientists are giving predictions now, but China took just over 2 months, and if we behave as they did, it could take the same. I hope Europe manages to co-ordinate in the right way. Let’s cross fingers to this challenging times.
How do you see the chances to re-gain the loss of now?
We have a strong base of loyal clients who love our products, all around the world, and this will helps supporting the business. We have orders to fill up our production. In many countries it’s still possible to go windsurfing. So for the moment is still fine. What will be our future, is what we do today. This is how we think. We are receiving more emails from our clients asking us questions on the products or simply advices on anything regarding windsurfing. We shifted our travel budgets to other marketing and services to the clients. The important thing now is to keep busy and this temporary mode will come to an end sooner. The sooner the better for everyone.
Will this crisis stop the R&D?
R&D did not stop, as where some of our tester live, they are still allowed to go sailing. We are designing new samples to test. I had a special permission for testing until yesterday, but I needed to do it alone, plus I had to inform authorities. Now till April 3rd, I’m blocked as well. We are not in a rushing situation as 2021 is done and ready for production. Now everyone focus should be in helping support this fight. Let’s hope that our governments will support the population as they are promising, and again let’s all behave as they ask us to, so we can get out of this situation earliest.
#Keepsafe, #keepdistance from everyone, and earlier we are going to go back to the beaches together windsurfing!
Thank you for your answers and good luck for the time to come!
Hopefully!!