BELONG To People

That time in Pakistan

• WORK
• PASSION

The number of people and stories a person encounters within a company is endless and varied as the story of Teddy collaborators also proves. There are those who were told about Teddy by a friend, the ones who replied to a job ad, others who dreamt a future in fashion and saw an opportunity when looking at Terranova and Calliope signs. In addition, there are those who met Teddy in less ordinary occasions, in very different places far from usual ones and almost unknown until 30 years ago. It is the story of Stefano Rolli, the current buyer supervisor for Terranova brand, who first came in touch with Teddy in mid-90s while he was working in Pakistan. “I am from Rome and after a short experience in the Italian Carabinieri Corps I started working for the textile business run by my family”, he tells us. “In the beginning we managed the import and export of textile machinery, later we started to import textiles too, which were reworked in Northern Italy”.

In Dhaka, Bangladesh, he came in contact with a small Italian community where he met Father Oreste Benzi, an old friend of Vittorio Tadei, and later some Teddy employees who at that time were surveying the opportunity to increase the manufacturing of products abroad.  That meeting soon turned into a professional relationship. “Through the family business we started manufacturing the first order from Teddy and, about a year later, Renzo Ranieri, one of the managers who supervised the “Asia” mission, offered me a job I decided to accept almost immediately, because it was the opportunity for a new adventure in a large and important company”. Thanks to his strong knowledge of the country, Rolli helped Ranieri in the new path leading to delocalizing retail production to South-east Asia, in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries like Myanmar and Vietnam, which today still provide for always new and never-ending pools of suppliers. 

Many memories from his 24-year career come to and cross his mind.  Among those, however, it stands the day on which he came from Pakistan to Rimini, to visit the corporate headquarters, where he found an unexpected way of doing and mood welcoming him.

“There was an incredible attachment to people. It was evident even only in some moments, through a few words and quick looks but it was impossible to remain indifferent. Then, at Block 97, Vittorio asked me a strange question: «Are you passionate?»”.

Stefano Rolli, Buyer Supervisor
Terranova

A question that disoriented him in the beginning and, after a while, was asked him again by Endrio Marcelloni, Terranova Brand Director, causing the same astonishment and disorientation.

However, as working days passed, in the number of situations and meetings he experienced, the question disappeared in Stefano’s mind as he understood that the driver moving everything and making possible to overcome the difficulties of an unpredictable business was nothing else but passion. “The many goals we have achieved over the years required many efforts, sometimes even conflicts. Heated discussions, which might have been misunderstood from the outside, but which are the mirror of a strong attachment to certain values. For me that passion is still alive and allows me to experience Teddy not just as a place where I work, but as a place where I meet a family I belong to. My goal for the future is to be able to teach something to those next to me, directly or indirectly”, he says at the end. “Work preserves human dignity for people and for me there is no Company in the world like Teddy that is able to fulfill this purpose”.