“In February 2020, shortly before the pandemic was declared, I was on a trip to the United States to visit some of our major customers with a view to Elchim’s upcoming 75th anniversary celebration. Unfortunately, in a few days everything has changed ». This is how Luca Sabbatini, the third generation at the helm of Elchim – an Italian company that has been producing hairdryers, stylers and professional hairdressing tools since 1945 – talks about the past 2020, but above all the new year between hopes and development prospects.
“The effects of the pandemic last year had a serious impact on our company – continues Sabbatini -: almost two months of tax closure that significantly affected production, but above all uncertainty and intermittent closures in all the countries where our company has a distribution. The impossibility of meeting our partners in trade fairs and travel has also been added. For us, the personal relationship is fundamental and an aspect that characterizes our reference sector: the professional supply of products for personal care and in particular the world of professional hairstyling ».
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The winning weapons to resist in this situation were teamwork and innovation. “Ours is a very small niche company and one of the smallest in the sector and in the sector – continues the entrepreneur -, our core values are those of our family and the families of those who work within our company such as employees or craftsmen in the supply chain. From them I received support beyond all expectations and a lot of understanding, from when in March 2020 we were forced to layoff until, ready for the reopening, we concentrated efforts and energies until late in the evening to design, program, develop. My thoughts in those moments went to the early days of Elchim, which had only been told to me as a child, when the founders, after the great sufferings of the Second World War, the loss of their home and emigrants from Vicenza, built the company without no starting resource but with a lot of work and determination ».
And he adds: «Resilience and teamwork were the basis of the innovation we launched in September 2020: our core business, the professional hairdryer, meets cosmetics. I would have liked to present it in person at a trade fair, as is our habit, but I must admit that the presentation made using new digital technologies went beyond my own expectations ».
This is the first professional treatment in pods for hair dryers. These pods, properly inserted in a special diffuser compatible with most Elchim hair dryers, release active ingredients, which transform the hair according to the desired effects (smoothing, anti-frizz, volumizing, etc.) for drying, styling and treatment in a single gesture.