Farotti Essenze, our lab is still fab

Rimini-based Farotti Srl is a family company whose major sources of revenue come from the cosmetics and personal care industries, that the firm provides with essences and fragrances. Both playing in the domestic and global arenas, Farotti owes research a significant part of its success.

Farotti Essenze was established in 1972 in the town of Rimini, famous worldwide for its seaside and tourism, thanks to the skills and determination of founder Giuliano Farotti, who started producing fragrances and essences to serve the cosmetics, perfumery, detergent and cleanser industry. Or, as the company states, «any sector in which scent can be considered an added value». After 43 years in the business, a new generation of the Farotti family, with Giuliano’s three daughters, is ready to lead the company towards previously unexplored markets targeting Brazil, China, Australia or Russia. Faces and people in the managing board can change but the business won’t: specialization, competence and innovation are about to drive Farotti’s strategies in the near future too, as Mrs. Letizia Farotti, head of the purchasing, image and communication offices, says.

Could you briefly describe, Mrs. Farotti, what were the most important milestones in your company’s evolutions and its major steps ahead in the research and development sectors?
Farotti Essenze has been operating in the essences market for decades, since it was established by my father, Giuliano Farotti, back in 1972, and surely built upon his passion and will to succeed. In the early Seventies the company would only look and operate as a small laboratory whilst more than 40 years later, today, it represents a well-known and consolidated player both in Italy and abroad. Together with my two sisters, in recent years, I started collaborating with my father, with the precise aim to preserve the peculiarities that always characterized and distinguished our business. This means we are strongly committed to quality and services and that we always try to cooperate with customers worldwide in order to fulfill their requests and needs and in order to create a solid relation of partnership with them, no matter where they are. At the same time one of our most important goals is a constant evolution, in terms of technology, in first place, but also under the aspects of strategies, research and development. A few years ago we purchased a series of gas-chromatographic analysis instruments and we are also carrying on a number of projects with Italian universities and research centers. Information and communication technology is crucial as well and this is the reason why today we are implementing a new version of our Internet site, on the one hand, and on the other hand testing a new software platform that should support our salesforce and boost their current capabilities.

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Is Farotti Essenze planning to expand its presence and business outside Italy too? And where?
Most part of Farotti Essenze’s revenues (i.e. 80%) comes from Italy, at the moment, but internationalization and exports are undoubtedly on top of the list of our priorities for the near future. Thus, we are today planning a coherent roadmap to consolidate our business overseas and to expand furthermore. We sell our products in a variety of foreign countries and if I were to pick the most important of them, then I would certainly name Turkey, Nigeria, China, the United States, Spain, Poland. But as I said, we are defining the strategies to lead the firm to a further growth.

Besides the ones You mentioned above, which Countries could drive Your «further growth»?
Recently we visited Russia on a business mission and we are today striving to sign some partnership agreements with local distributors and sales representatives. But indeed, we are also confident we could achieve interesting figures in China, where Farotti Essenze’s business could rocket, and that Brazil could display important opportunities in the next few years.

3What are the major opportunities and the most prominent critical factors in today’s business, especially when we look at the cosmetics and personal care industries, in your opinion?
Creativity and passion are crucial parts of our everyday duty and this represents, at the same time, a great opportunity. The very different needs that each customer displays allow us to always differentiate our product portfolio, always trying to enrich it with new solutions, which is certainly very challenging, on the one hand, but also fascinating. The obstacles we are facing have to do with the global economic downturns every producer must deal with today; and with uncertainty. Also, we couldn’t avoid to mention regulatory issues, becoming tighter and more detailed with time.

What kind of requests and needs does your company have to fulfill more frequently today?
Consumers have begun to pay a growing attention to environmental issues and personal wellness in the last few years and that translated into a deeper attention to the raw materials a producer uses for developing its offer, always keeping an eye on transparency and complete traceability of ingredients.

Cosmetics brands have to deal with such needs and with these new trends and therefore try to align their offer to the market’s requirements, by choosing harmless and zero-impact ingredients or formulations, for instance, respectful of those tightening regulatory issues I already mentioned earlier on.

Farotti Essenze is now able to offer a complete portfolio of fragrances, compatible with all of these trends and requests.

Could you then give our readers a few examples, Mrs. Farotti?
Our Ipa product line exclusively includes allergenic-free fragrances, while the Ecolabel brand encloses Ecolabel-compliant fragrances, in conformity with the homonymous European environmental quality standard. Also, the products included in the Fragranze Natura catalogue are exclusively based on natural essential oils, while, last but not least, our Fragranze Biologiche offer is produced in accordance to the European Icea certification standards.

But a further trend we are noticing in the cosmetics industry and namely among the largest corporations worldwide, is that of trying to satisfy the needs of an ever-expanding customer base, addressing clients with a diversified products portfolio. This is the reason why we always try to provide clients with new fragrances, both in terms of formulation and under an olfactory point of view.

How much of your overall revenues do You traditionally invest in research and development and, therefore, how important the R&D activities are to Farotti Essenze?
Of course, innovation, research and development play a crucial role in our overall business, and represent a key element in the company’s strategy of growth, since they prove essential in order to aggressively compete in today’s most challenging scenarios. Markets are undergoing an uninterrupted evolution: customers’ needs are changing very rapidly and market trends are changing as well, together with regulatory issues, as we already considered.

You need technology to keep your business up to date and running, and to keep up with competitors worldwide. These are also some of the reasons why we invest 10% of our global revenues in research and innovation.

Cosmetics is your core-business: but what kind of industries are proving attractive for Farotti Essenze’ competences and for the company’s product portfolio, in recent times?
70% of our business comes from the cosmetics, personal care and perfumery segments, of course, but we also have diversified targets, thanks to the ability the company has in shaping its offer depending on the markets’ requests. Lately, we can see interesting opportunity in the air fresheners segment, now focused on top-class perfumery-like products. But I also believe that a new form of environmental-friendly or environment-oriented cosmetics is today clearly on the rise and that the attention customers pay to naturalness is poised to grow in the future. The usage of top-quality products has always been one of Farotti Essenze’s distinguishing elements and this is why the cleansers’ industry proves today least attractive to us, since we found it hard to combine quality products with a competitive price policy, in that very segment.

A BESPOKE SERVICE FOR THE COSMETICS INDUSTRY
The perfume and cosmetics sectors represent over 70% of Farotti’s revenues, while the remaining part of the company’s business comes from customers in the detergent industry. Farotti Essenze’s scents are also used in a wide variety of different areas: room deodorants or air fresheners, candles, potpourri and incense, the tanning industry, rubber, plastic, paints, glues, and watercolors. Farotti strives to meet the customers’ requirements, regardless the field of application, by «gathering bit by bit the characteristics that best reflect the personality of the final product and the image» that the client wishes to produce.

AN ECO-FRIENDLY COMPANY
Since its foundation Farotti has always sought to respect regulations in its sector and has been UNI EN ISO 9001:2008 certified for years. The company considers environmental issues as crucial to its everyday business and besides promoting the usage of biodegradable and recycled products, it launched a series of allergens-free, Ecolabel conform and fully organic product lines.

by R. Carminati