Giovanni Ferrero and his family: work, create, give

The son of Maria Franca Fissolo and Michele Ferrero was born on the 2^nd of April 1964 in Farigliano, Italy. His family owned a multinational confectionery corporation called Ferrero and they moved to Brussels, Belgium in 1975 where he made his studies.

The father was a fervent Catholic, visiting the shrine in Lourdes each year and had a Madonna placed in every office or factory he worked in. While Giovanni was studying in Belgium he became interested in literature, reading all the works of Balzac and Hugo.

Since most of the story revolves around the history of Ferrero SpA we should start our story with the company. The family business began with the paternal grandparents of Giovanni, Piera and Pietro, who opened a sweets shop in Alba, Italy during the Second World War and with the aid of his great uncle they managed to create the Ferrero Company in 1946.

In this period “chocolate was so expensive, it was really high-end, nobody could afford it, at least in Italy” as Giovanni Ferrero said, his grandfather started Pasta Gianduja which was wrapped in aluminum foil and was a sort of solidified Nutella that needed a knife to cut it. An accessible price made it a big success and it started to bread the perception of that period in which chocolate was “only for very special occasions and celebrations like Christmas and Easter”.

From the sweets shop and pastry shop it became a confectionery factory. The great uncle of Giovanni has the same name as him and he built a national distribution network that allowed the brand to reach all of Italy by 1954. Only in 1950 did Michele Ferrero join the family business and seven year later he was the person in charge, since the uncle died.

In the same year that Giovanni was born the hazelnut paste they created was rebranded as Nutella and launched in the UK. The original recipe was modified by Michele who wanted to add vegetable oil in the mix so that the chocolate would be easy to spread and be put in glass jars.

Giovanni remembers “My father said, we can push it further, there are new technologies, new ways to integrate this winning recipe” and this is how Nutella was born. The addition of hazelnuts was originally a method of saving money on chocolate since the cocoa was rationed at the time. The “-ella” is a diminutive that is affectionately given to things you love in Italian.

The company expanded rapidly and during this time Giovanni moved to the United States to study marketing, planning to help with the family company afterwards and he did just this when he returned to Europe. The father became ill and passed the leadership of the company to his sons in 1997. This is when he and his brother Pietro became joint-CEOs of Ferrero SpA.

A lot of emphasis was placed from the start on the secrecy of their recipes since they were worried about industrial espionage and no media was allowed inside the plants. The products were made with machines created and designed by an engineering department of the company and they never held any press conferences, just like Willy Wonka and his chocolate factory.

Aside from Nutella, Ferrero created a lot of other products like Ferrero Rocher, Pocket Coffee, Mon Cheri, Giotto, Confetteria Raffaello, Hanuta wafers, the Kinder product line and the Tic Tac breath mints.

Michele Ferrero wanted to orient on the “give” part of their motto and in 1983 he created the Ferrero Foundation in Alba, Piedmont which promotes activities in arts, science, history and literature through the organization of conventions, conferences, exhibitions and seminars.

Giovanni remained the sole CEO in 2011 when his brother died in a bicycle accident in South Africa and in February 2015 his father Michele died as well at his home in Monte Carlo, Monaco. At the time of his death he was the richest person in Italy with a net worth of $26 billion, surpassing Silvio Berlusconi in March 2008.

The Reputation Institute survey of 2009 ranked Ferrero as the most reputable company in the world but it is also one “of the world’s most secretive firms”, but some of the workers were interviewed and they all said only good things about the employers, calling them “wholesome, honest and respectful”.

The Ferrero SpA is comprised of 38 trading companies, 18 factories and around 21,500 employees that create no less than 365,000 tons of Nutella every year, being the largest consumer of hazelnuts in the world, with 25% of the global production going into their factories in 2014. The chocolate is spread over 160 countries.

The way they the Ferrero family chose to market their product was what led to their success, in the beginning they created a “pop lux” product, something that wasn’t necessary but a treat and instead of emphasizing it as a surrogate or something cheap and affordable, they focused on the natural qualities of the product and the fact that the nuts inside made it healthier and better than the ones that didn’t.

Children and family were those in the ads, making the milk and hazelnuts stand out instead of the sugar and saturated fat and thus recommending it as a balanced breakfast. In 1998 they sponsored the national football team and this connected the brand with the Italian national sentiments while also hinting at the idea that it’s so healthy that even athletes could use it.

Before taking complete control of the company, Giovanni was a writer and has four books published in Italian, with the first one in 1990 entitled “Marketing progetto 2000. La gestione della complessita”. The novels “Stelle di tenebra” in 1999, “Campo Paradiso” in 2007 and “Il canto delle farfalle” followed in 2010.

Giovanni keeps to himself, following the secrecy tradition of his family and not much is known about his private life. What we know is that he is married to Paola Rossi and has a son Michael. He tried to follow the hard working pathway set by his parents and thus always said no to foreign acquisitions, with the last attempt being Nestle in 2013.

“We were born as a family business and we intend to remain so. We are not concerned with maximizing revenues in the short term. If we listed, we would be under pressure to produce dividends and profits”, something he doesn’t want to concern himself with. Since he is the one who inherited the family fortune he is currently estimated to be worth $21.7 billion according to Bloomberg.