Over the years, I’ve developed the firm belief that there are similarities between the purpose of a company’s life and that of an individual. They both aspire to that kind of happiness which Aristotle called “eudaimonia”, the perfect union between physical and intellectual pleasures. I think that if this idea can apply to all businesses, it is even truer for our company: coffee drinking is a purely hedonistic pursuit, although there is an increasing amount of scientific evidence to demonstrate the positive effects of this dark beverage on our health.

Our corporate philosophy is in some way consistent with the product we offer. First of all, we are a “stakeholder company”. In other words, we are conscious of serving all those stakeholders with whom we interact on a daily basis: the consumers first and foremost, then customers, collaborators, suppliers, and the communities we have dealings with.
Rather like an inverted pyramid, at our company shareholders rank last of all these stakeholders. Unlike what normally happens in a “shareholder company”, in which the shareholder reigns supreme, we set ourselves the objective of improving the quality of life for all our stakeholders.
We do this by following two principles: on the one hand, a passion for excellence, in the sense of a love for the beautiful and the well-made. On the other hand, ethics, in the sense of creating long-term values through transparency, sustainability and developing people.
As a whole, this is a truly sentimental, almost romantic vision! This is exactly why we were encouraged to convert – with tongue only slightly in cheek – the famous “four Ps of marketing” into the “four Cs by illy”. The first of these “Cs” is Cuore (“heart”), in other words the passion of each one of us, through which we want to delight the second “C”, i.e. our Consumers. If they are happy, their repeat purchases will generate Cash (the third “C”) which the company needs for Crescita (“growth”, the fourth “C”), which is our reward for a job well done.

But where does this heart, this passion, come from? First of all, from our personal motivation, and the mirroring of personal values with those of the company. These prepare the intellect for those states of mind which, as stated by the great neurophysiologist Antonio Damasio, are nothing but stored emotions that are reawakened by day-to-day experiences, generating visceral sensations that are then decoded by the brain. In the final analysis, emotion is what releases the momentum that helps us work towards improving the quality of life.