Why is your retail career more tied to engineering than civil engineering?

From art to retail.I took a look. No.I admit it.Let's take out another one...

This is another hat that defines me because...With this cord, I look like a graduate,but this hat reminds me of my student days.

Years of hard work, absolutely, because I'm actually an engineer."Why is your career in retail more related to engineering than your previous path as a civil engineer?" I'm someone who needs stimuli.

I look for stimulation, even within my team and, in general, at work.

I think the most beautiful thing you can do within a team is to stimulate the creative side, the side of innovation, thinking, ideas.

What I always tell the guys in my team is: bring up everything that comes to your mind.

It may sound like a joke, but I think it's fundamental to have this flow of creative thinking, and then we realise if it's the right moment to turn this little cloud, this idea,into something concrete, a project.

There we have a series of variables: budget, time, resources,alignment with the commercial strategy.

I won't go into detail. Why is retail more connected to engineering than my previous path?

Because, as I said, I work hard, I'm a civil engineer and I work as a retail manager. Architecture, design, construction are, without a doubt, a passion, but nothing more, because right after...

Actually, before graduating I started working in stores as a promoter, because I wanted financial independence and decided to live on my own.

Besides doing my undergraduate thesis, I was also working, but that didn't discourage me.

After graduating, I started working as an engineer.

I remember having a very nice office. I'd gotten my first job,freshly hired and graduated.

In this great job, with three huge screens in front of me and on the outskirts of Rome, I had a huge window overlooking a huge green hill.

Great, the job of your dreams, with big opportunities, opportunities for growth. That case was in an international context,they were talking about building a big hotel in Azerbaijan, I was eager to travel and discover that place.

Maybe that also made me reflect on how little experience I had, very far, very different from the work behind a screen. That, which was truly the contact with the client, is where you really see human diversity,all the possible and unimaginable nuances.

So, what happened?What I was missing, spending so many hours, more than eight behind a screen, was connecting with human warmth,that contact which was the client, which isn't so different.

I simply went from human contact, from the need to offer a product, to designing, planning a space for people, and without knowing them, do we come into contact with these people?

This has made me think.When my former boss, from when I worked as a promoter in stores, contacted me, I clearly let him know that now I had an engineering degree, so I wasn't going to go back to working as a promoter.

Let's say, there was something more of me in the commercial plans and, I'd say I achieved it with desire, tenacity, and determination.

Then I became an area manager,then a trainer, all that part about training, or even the transmission, presentation of the brand, the values of the message that each product carries.

Today, I focus my work on contact with the public, with people,the needs of each of us every day.

And then, a bit like a salmon, or maybe a shrimp,I go back and build, develop the strategy.

That's why I always encourage my team to visit the stores,the shops, the spaces, to talk to people and value the role of the promoter, to value the people who represent the brand,who show their faces, who convey the message,a very important responsibility as well.