By Simone Bandini
We tell you the story of an emporium that has become a modern enterprise, Pieroni srl, without ever abdicating its role of reference and support for the local community. Adelmo Pieroni opened the doors of the well-kept and well-stocked showroom in Diecimo, near Borgo a Mozzano.
“You could sell everything, except gold!” So said grandfather Adelmo, when he told about the first shop in Corsagna. And perhaps it is from here that we can start to tell the story of Pieroni: from a village emporium where there was everything we needed to live, build, move forward. Everything, except gold!
We are in the post-war period, but in reality the origins of this adventure are even earlier: the grandmother’s parents had started a business that was not just a shop, but rather a point of reference for a community that had little but needed everything.
“Food, shoes, clothes, tools, ‘liquor loaded by truckloads’ at Christmas,” Adelmo tells us with a dreamy expression. In Corsagna, where there were no alternatives, the emporium was a form of spontaneous welfare, made up of trust and relationships.
Then grandfather Adelmo took over, together with his children Dino and Dina. We are between the fifties and sixties, and the business grows together with the town. Corsagna is small, but alive, with a strong tradition of masons and entrepreneurs. It is almost natural that, alongside basic necessities, the first building materials appear. The cement arrives by truck and is unloaded by hand, kept in a garage that previously housed the family car. “Then an American jeep was bought in Livorno, then a ‘Mercedes Unimog’: they were used to bring the materials to the construction sites, where the valley was being rebuilt after the devastation of the war,” he continues.
Thus was born, almost without declaring it, the building vocation of Pieroni. Agriculture, hardware, building materials: from seeds to concrete, even hunting rifles. A real emporium, in fact. Always with the same philosophy of service to the country.
The first tile showroom was little more than: “An L-hook screwed to the wall, with some 20 x 20 tiles resting on top of each other,” smiles Adelmo. Today it is impressive to think about it – especially if we make a comparison with the rather well-stocked and well-kept showroom we visited – but at the time it was a great novelty. And from there it went on, step by step, following the evolution of building and living.
When Adelmo and Angelo, Dino’s sons, joined the company, work was already in the air, a daily habit since childhood: “Those who learn it do it”, has always been the motto of the house. At the age of twelve, for example, gas cylinders were changed, what needed to be done was done, not out of habit but out of pure necessity. Those were the years of the economic boom, and the business continued to grow.
Adelmo now takes care of the showroom, the choice of products, the set-up. A job that requires eye, taste, the ability to anticipate the times. Tiles, he explains: “They follow cyclical fashions such as flared trousers in fashion; Every ten years everything returns, but always with a new awareness. And long before it became a normal practice, Pieroni was working with digital design, rendering, three-dimensional simulations. Tools that do not serve to amaze, but to reassure the client, to accompany families in their choice”.
It was around the 2000s that the company moved downstream, to the current headquarters in Diecimo; without, however, abandoning the Corsagna store, which continued to live for years. Then we arrived in the city, in Lucca, with a different showroom, more oriented towards design and high-level renovations.
Two souls, consistent with two territories: the city and the valley. Different, but complementary.
In between, always the people: Italians and foreigners, local families and new residents who have arrived from other countries, with different ideas of how to recover a ‘rustic’, and different sensibilities and concepts of beauty. At Pieroni you can find, for example, both traditional and modern terracotta, minimal style or classic materials that have a story to tell. Always with a precise choice, that is, quality first of all: “Without this essential criterion of choice, quality, I don’t sell anything,” he declares.
This is not a slogan, but an essential archetype to which the company has always been faithful.
The same logic applies to services: design, assistance, support for professionals, up to systems, stoves, fireplaces, today also eco-building, photovoltaics, fixtures. Times change, technologies change, but human relationships remain central. The Internet can show us images, give us ideas. Here, on the other hand, real, tailor-made solutions are built, with someone who takes responsibility for the final result. After forty years of work, Adelmo says it clearly: “The greatest satisfaction is to get to the end of the project with a serene customer. Who will be able to see and evaluate in advance, through simulations and digital drawings, what he will have, and thus will feel supported and ‘accompanied'”. “It is the same spirit of service as my grandfather, who used to say to the customers:
“Do you have to build your home? In the meantime, take the stuff and go easy.” Even when the money wasn’t there…
Perhaps today there is gold here, in many forms. But that has never been the real value, which is instead having remained true to oneself, from 1948 to today. Even today, you enter Pieroni to buy something and leave with one more friendship.
Info: Loc. Pastino 67, Diecimo, Borgo a Mozzano (Lu), Tel. 0583 838375 / info@pieroni.it / www.pieroni.it
Lucca’s show-room is in Via Borgo Giannotti, 486.