Just the faintest whiff of sawdust is enough to transport Jean Carlo Fino back to his childhood. When he was 10, he used to love sitting very still, very wide-eyed, watching one of the carpenters at his family’s factory programme the machinery – the first computerised equipment of its kind in Malta – to create chairs bound for the UK.
They were heady days for the company, which had been started by his grandfather Carmelo as a carpentry workshop in a garage in Guardamangia in 1935. The workshop expanded and Carmelo’s eldest son Lawrence joined him after the war, when their success forced them to start thinking of expanding. They decided on Mrieħel, which in 1969 was just open fields except for Farsons, and gradually bought parcels of land (they now have 18,000 square metres there).
They built a factory, a small showroom and an office, helped by Lawrence’s three brothers, setting the foundations for the Fino that became a household name, quite literally.
In the mid-1980s, two of the brothers moved on to their own interests, but by then, the company’s success forced Fino to make yet another radical change: they demolished the premises and started from scratch, dedicating a lot more of the space to the showroom – up from 220 square metres to 3,400 square metres – and spread it out along one floor, in line with customer preferences.
“At that point, we only imported components. Our business was manufacturing and we employed 180 people. We offered furniture for the whole house in those days, and although we had a set number of styles, the options available for each of them, as well as the fact that each was built to suit the client, meant that we were really still offering a bespoke product,” Mr Fino said.
The company invested heavily in the latest equipment, including spraying robots, but by the mid-1990s, the writing was on the wall: if Malta acceded to the EU, the extortionate levies would be removed, forcing local companies to compete with imported furniture, from countries with lower labour costs and whose economies of scale and large markets made them much cheaper.
“We knew that the levies had to be removed and a few of us lobbied for them to be dismantled outright rather than be phased out over the years… But local companies, even the very successful ones, were too small to compete. This is why we, Joinwell and FXB set up a consortium, Interprogetti, to bid for major contracts like the doors at Mater Dei Hosital, the guestrooms at the Intercontinental Hotel, the Corinthia Bab Africa in Tripoli and the doors for the new Bank of Valletta head office in Santa Venera,” he said.
Libya was a natural hunting ground for Maltese companies but the consortium gradually split up and only Fino stuck it out there, until the revolution ended all activity. By then, it had added a number of prestigious contracts to its portfolio, ranging from universities and hotels to embassies, all made in Malta.
In parallel, Fino knew that in order to survive with foreign brands, they had one option: if you can’t beat them, join them. So they started to manufacture well-known brands under licence, all the while securing exclusivity for top brands from Italy and France.
“Fino was already associated with a certain level of quality so we decided to stick to a limited number of top brands and designers. But as that side of the business grew, we had to decide whether to carry on with domestic contracts…
“Times had changed for bespoke furniture. People used to buy solid wood furniture that would last them a generation. Now people think nothing of changing a kitchen after 10 or 15 years. We get new kitchen models every eight months or so… And we are very good at what we do. We are the bestsellers for Veneta Cucine on a per capita basis. The decision was not easy. My father and Anthony felt that the only option to keep us viable in the long-term was to downsize the manufacturing side, which meant letting go of 40 people in one go, who had all been with us for a very long time.
The EU pushed us to seek out new opportunities overseas
“We started to concentrate on commercial contracts, focusing on projects like restaurants, banks and so on. At the moment we are doing the partitioning for the new Parliament building. We are down to 25-30 people involved directly in production. But it only accounts for a quarter or so of our turnover.”
With Libya still in turmoil, Fino had to look further afield. The company set its eyes on Doha, which is seeing dynamic growth – which will only increase as the World Cup approaches.
“We are doing turnkey projects – again manufacturing here and exporting – and already have 10 people there. There is an amazing buzz in Qatar at the moment,” he said.“If the momentum keeps going at this pace, we may decide to start production there…”
The company also opened a Veneta Cucine store in Tunisia last year with a local partner and others are planned in the future. So 10 years after accession, there is no trace of bitterness. Mr Fino is, if anything, pragmatic and optimistic.
“Without the changes that accession forced, I wonder where we would have been after 77 years and now in the third generation… The levies made us complacent about competition and their removal clearly drove down prices and offered customers more choice. The EU pushed us to seek out new opportunities overseas, to get good suppliers, to go into niche areas like offices, to invest in design software and new machinery – yet again – and painful as it was, we had to think outside the box. And look where we are now…”