Marco Zago (CEO Porcelanosa Cagliari): “We will be opening another Porcelanosa associate store in the city of Sassari.”

“To achieve success, the focus must be on the professional development of the staff.”

Porcelanosa Cagliari, managed by TER.MO.SA Design SRL, is the Porcelanosa associate store that launched the Porcelanosa Associates Programme in 2016.

With the opening of its own showroom in the Elmas industrial area five years ago, it laid the foundation stone for a project that now has more than thirty associate showrooms around the world. 

Now they are preparing to open a new showroom in Sardinia, in the city of Sassari; a project that underlines the success of the Associates Programme.

From the capital of the Italian island of Sardinia, its CEO takes stock of these five years with Porcelanosa.

“We are very confident that after the pandemic, our industry will recover and we are ready to take advantage of the opportunities that arise.”

Porcelanosa Cagliari has been a Porcelanosa associate in Italy for five years now.  What do you remember about the early days of the store?

Termosa was founded 30 years ago and over time has established itself in Sardinia as a leading company in the plumbing and heating sector.  In 2016 the need appeared to expand the range of products on offer in order to provide a 360° service to customers and the local area, hence the idea and vision of opening a Porcelanosa store, a leading company on the world stage.

Without doubt, my fondest memory of the early days is the wonderful and successful opening party.  After months of hard work to finish the showroom on time, seeing all those people enthusiastic and pleasantly surprised by the new store gave us the strength and motivation to embark on this journey.

The Associates Programme has grown a lot since then, reaching four continents.  Porcelanosa Group has also grown significantly; what changes have you seen over the last five years?

Porcelanosa is undoubtedly a company that is always looking ahead in terms of development and research, and a lot has changed during these years in terms of both sales and products.

All the new products and projects presented left us speechless and enthused – the prefabricated bathrooms, fitwall, wallpaper, the new Gamadecor sofa and furniture collection, and all the new Noken products: there has been continuous development and focus on the market.

In parallel with the growth of Porcelanosa Group, our company has also decided to pursue its own growth and by the end of 2021 we will be opening another Porcelanosa Associate store in the city of Sassari, in the north of the island. 

In 2021, associates stores were opened in Tashkent, Quimper, Bratislava…  As veterans of the Programme, what advice would you give to new associates who decide to start their own Porcelanosa store?

Over the last few years, we have gained a certain amount of experience and awareness of what it means to work with a major brand like Porcelanosa.

The advice we would like to give our colleagues is to focus on the professional development of their staff, and on the relationships of utmost trust established with their customers.  The growth of the people who represent the company is reflected in the growth of the company itself, and in the same way, giving our customers the house of their dreams encourages the company to grow exponentially.

It is essential to work in synergy with professionals such as architects, engineers, surveyors and construction companies.  Our task is to work alongside these people to find the most suitable solutions for the customer.  It’s really important to work closely with them in order to ensure the success of the show-room. 

How are you coping with the new season in the store?  After a few difficult months, we are seeing a degree of stability returning.

At last, we are slowly returning to normality, albeit a normality that’s very different from that to which we were all accustomed.

These long months of pandemic have accelerated processes that had already been underway for some time.  We now need to be very adept at harnessing these changes and implementing the necessary changes to reap the maximum benefits.

We are very confident about the recovery of such a key driving industry as construction, and in recent months we have been working to improve ourselves, our service and the way we present ourselves to the market.  We are ready to take on new challenges and projects and we are ready to seize the opportunities that arise.