To tell the new project of the Federica and Brunello Cucinelli Foundation, the Universal Library of Solomeo, which seems to have come out of a story by Borges and would have made his friend and Italian publisher Franco Maria Ricci rejoice, let’s start with two ideas that emerged during the presentation at the Theater Strehler in Milan. The first: «According to an investigation by Washington Post, only 9% of digital Native Americans study e-books, which in fact have never broken through, as Jeff Bezos, owner of the newspaper and founder of Amazon, who continues to sell hundreds of millions of paper books well knows ». Second point: «I love books. Very very much”. The first sentence was said by Gianluca Vacchi, who is not a digital native but has 41 million followers on Tik Tok and Instagram, where he admits to spending the time he does not dedicate to his entrepreneurial activities and, yes, to reading on paper. The second sentence is from one of Brunello Cucinelli’s two oldest grandchildren: she is seven years old and is madly in love with books.
Cucinelli’s humanistic capitalism
The Universal Library of Solomeo – a few kilometers from Perugia – was born from Cucinelli’s passion for culture and the transmission of all kinds of knowledge, including artisanal ones, and is part of the path started many years ago of environmental and social sustainability, a path which the entrepreneur prefers to call “humanistic capitalism”. Perhaps we could speak of “humanistic finance”: the Library is an investment of several million. It will be housed in an eighteenth-century building, will contain 400/500 thousand volumes and will open in 2024. But it was made possible by the landing on the Stock Exchange, as well as by Cucinelli’s vision and – of course – by the excellent results of the company. Listed since 2012, it closed the first nine months of 2021 with revenues over 500 million and, more importantly, it has already exceeded the pre-Covid levels, those of the January-September 2019 period. “It was Gianluca Vacchi who opened my eyes to ‘opportunity for listing “Cucinelli said from the Strehler stage, where there was, besides him, only a gigantic bust of the emperor Adriano and Massimo De Vico (in the photo above with Cucinelli) architect, friend, companion from “time immemorial” and co-author of the autobiography released in 2018.
The listing, the Beauty Park and the Theater
«Facing the stock market means giving oneself an iron financial discipline, as well as management, but also taking a step back, opening up to external resources – underlined Cucinelli -. Just two years after the Ipo, right here at the Strehler, in November 2014, we presented the project of the Beauty Park, to transform the land (hundreds of hectares, ed) around Solomeo in the green oasis they were before the construction of industrial warehouses ». A dream that became reality in just four years: the park and the theater inside, which hosted the greatest European directors, “made their debut in society” in 2018, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the company’s birth.
Also in 2014, from the Strehler stage and three years ago, from the Solomeo square, Cucinelli did not want to give precise figures, as if more than the cost of the Park, the Theater and now the Library, the ethical value counted, by definition not measurable in money. Gualtiero Bassetti, Archbishop of Perugia, invited to the stage to “bless” the Universal Library, wanted to talk about ethics and spirituality: «We often joke with Brunello and I snatch many promises of support for restorations of all kinds and he keeps practically all of them. On the other hand, he did not need any solicitation to help, before and after the pandemic, all people in difficulty, in Solomeo and beyond. His idea of family – concluded Bassetti – is in fact without borders: it includes his closest relatives, his employees, the small companies that work for him and, if you look closely, nature. It includes creation, I can say as a cardinal ».
Cucinelli and the health emergency
The first part of 2020 was not easy even for high-end companies, but it is precisely in that period – as the prelate recalled – that Cucinelli decided not to leave anyone at home and, given the health emergency, to support research and then the vaccination plan. Returning to the Library, Cucinelli himself will take care of it in the initial phase, flanked by experts from the three fields of knowledge from which the texts will be chosen, in Italian, but also English and ancient languages. Provided that they are “classic” in the sense that Italo Calvino gave at the end, books that never stop telling us what they have to tell us. Or, to use the quote from Voltaire dear to Cucinelli: “I’m with old books, I learn very little from new ones”.