I'm not a girl that takes no for an answer -- if I have a vision, I go for it, despite the naysayers and obstacles that riddle my path. I'm a big believer in the adage if there's a will there's a way.
So when I recently sat down with Gian Luca Rana, the CEO of the Giovanni Rana pasta company, and heard his story, I knew I was in good — and like-minded — company.
I found myself sitting with Gian Luca in Verona, Italy, his company's headquarters, because some six months prior I had connected with his father, Giovanni, the founder of the company, and fell in love with his story of starting the company. Now I was in Verona admiring his son's story of growing the company. And salivating over this family's famous pasta, of course.
I visited during a special weekend for the company – the Ranas were celebrating their company’s launch in the US, and were hosting dozens and dozens of Americans who had won a Giovanni Rana contest to be flown with a guest to Verona for a weekend of festivities and fun with the Rana family. Alongside the lucky contest winners, I was wined and dined to my heart (and stomach's) content, got a sneak peak at the Giovanni Rana factory where the magic happens, learned to make pasta, sailed to the Rana's gorgeous (and well known) lake estate, and best of all, got to know the Rana family and their story better.
In Gian Luca's office (his desk is a conference room table because he strongly believes in collaboration!), Gian Luca enthusiastically told me about his "Ferrari of pasta making," a machine he created that takes tortellini production to an entirely new (and speedy) level, about the way the company works (employees never want to leave because working for the Rana family is such a good gig), what is was like to work with his father (great and challenging all at once), and best of all: the way he grew the company.
When Giovanni was still in charge, Gian Luca told me, Giovanni Rana products were sold exclusively in Italy. They were wildly popular, and the company was a household name.
Gian Luca was thrilled by his father’s success, he told me, but he envisioned more. He imagined taking Giovanni Rana global. He could see Spaniards, the French, Americans and more enjoying Giovanni Rana pasta.
But when he told his father about his vision, it was clear his dream wasn't shared.
Why toy with expansion when what they were doing was working just fine? In fact, it was working very, very well?
But Gian Luca persisted. He believed in this dream.
Eventually, Giovanni relented and told Gian Luca to take some product over to Spain. If he could get the pasta stocked in some grocery stores there, great. If not, no more daydreaming of expansion.
So Gian Luca took some packages of pasta and a couple of Rana staff to Spain to test his vision.
Enthusiastic and energetic as he is, it's hard to imagine anyone turning Gian Luca down. But supermarket manager after supermarket manager declined Gian Luca's compelling proposal to stock Giovanni Rana products in their stores.
On the last day of his trip, Gian Luca was determined to succeed.
But yet again, the store manager turned him down.
"I wasn't going to leave defeated," Gian Luca told me. So what did he do?
He chummed it up with the store manager and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: he would make the manager and his wife dinner that evening with Giovanni Rana products. If the manager didn't love what he tasted, Gian Luca would pack up and fly home and not bother him again. But if he loved it, the manager would stock Giovanni Rana products.
Intrigued, the manager said yes.
That night, Gian Luca told me with a smile ear to ear, he and his staff cooked up an Italian feast using Giovanni Rana products.
The result: a smashing success.
And with that, Giovanni Rana’s products were being sold in Spain. Gian Luca packed his bags to return to Italy and tell his dad of his victory.
What follows is every entrepreneur’s dream come true: massive growth and success in markets across the world.
Gian Luca's excitement was infectious as he told me that now 60% of the company's sales are outside Italy, and he has his eyes set on even more expansion.
With respect for local tastes and preferences (Americans like their stuffed pasta full of chunky rather than mashed ingredients and prefer a longer boil time, for example), Gian Luca has been enormously successful in markets beyond Italy and truly proven that if there's a will there's a way. You just might have to get a little (or very) creative in the process.
When I arrived in Italy, I was already totally enamored with the Rana family and Giovanni's humble beginnings – not to mention completely addicted to the pasta -- but hearing Gian Luca’s story of the company's unfolding, I couldn't have been happier to be there in Verona with Gian Luca and his family to celebrate the company’s launch in the US.
I looked around at the festivities -- the band playing, the contest winners dancing, the wine flowing, the food piled high on plates with intoxicating aromas of truffle and garlic, and my gaze landed on the beaming, smiling face of Gian Luca, similarly taking in the glow of the party. This wasn’t simply a celebration of another company going global. This was the celebration of a man's dream come true -- a man who believed in his vision so much that he wouldn't take no for an answer.