Furio Ceciliato, the owner of Turin-based card publisher Origamo (pictured above), is well-known for his enthusiastic tenacity, but his latest campaign, pushing for the re-opening of card retailers in Italy is arguably his biggest triumph yet.
Last week the Italian Government granted the right for stationery shops and book shops (both being the prime card stockists in the country) a decision that was largely due to pressure of the campaign initiated by Furio.
As Italy was hit badly early on by the coronavirus pandemic, a widespread lockdown was imposed in early March.
“Stationery shops and bookshops, the key stockists of greeting cards, were closed with the big supermarkets or Amazon being the only places people could buy stationery,” explains Furio. When the Covid-19 situation started to ease in Italy Furio, knowing how frustrated his independent retailers felt about their ongoing forced closure, he decided to speak up for them.
Sent under the guise of President of the Associazione Italiana Biglietti Augurali (Italy’s Greeting Card Association), Furio made sent a letter, entitled ‘Stationery shops and bookshops must survive!’ to Giuseppe Conte, the Italian Prime Minister, and also published it on social media. In actual fact the association, while a long-held dream of Furio’s did not really exist, but does now!
“My ‘shout’ became viral and more than 300,000 people liked it and shared on their accounts. Newspapers, both nationals and regionals as well as our two most important magazines dedicated to our commercial worlds published it,” relayed Furio.
While he said this wave of support brought a “little bit more positivity to our customers, but it was still tough.”
Galvanising this sense of solidarity, Furio, together with retail customers and agents created a Facebook group, christened Cartolerie d’Italia, which translates as Stationery Shops of Italy.
“The idea was to facilitate a sharing of information and experiences during this difficult period. In less than 15 days we had signed up over 1,000 members and have now become the most active group in our commercial world on Facebook,” explained Furio.
Another unexpected positive to come out of this is that Furio’s appeal to Government has also ignited activity from other greeting card companies. “Now we are finally creating a group of greeting cards companies, with around 10 joining forces in the last week and the Italian Greeting Card Association is finally ready to fly!” says Furio triumphant. “The card sending habit is nowhere near as developed as in the UK. We post very few cards in Italy, they are generally bought to give with a gift at birthday events, weddings or graduations. However now at least our greeting card stockists can trade once again and with the bolstered strength of the Associazione Italiana Biglietti Augurali we can continue to be positive and fight for more. I might not have not sold a lot of cards of late, but have kept myself quite busy!!” adds Furio.
Top: Furio Ceciliato, the owner of Turin-based card publisher Origamo led the charge to allow Italian stationery shops and book shops to re-open.
