INTERVIEW WITH OUR CEO, LUCA MORESCHI.
The M.L.I. “Mole Lucidanti Italiane”, is an innovative company. How did it all start?
It all started when I was little, I spent the afternoons in the family business. With my tricycle I ran around in production, I looked at my father and grandfather with greasy hands and I thought “when I grow up I’ll be like you dad”. As I sometimes say, “I have wheels in my veins”, this has always been my life, the family business has existed since 1921 and I grew up talking about wheels and glass with glassmakers. Then when I was 17 my dad died and as soon as I turned 18 I started working, now I’m 47, I’ve been in this sector for 30 years that I love very much.
Life is made up of decisions, decisions that change everything and give a turning point that you wouldn’t have imagined until a few years before and so in 2016 I opened my company, M.L.I. “Mole Lucidanti Italiane”.Building a company from scratch, but with 30 years of entrepreneurial experience behind it, is a great strength, it means having the opportunity to apply knowledge and skills that come from 4 generations of wheel manufacturers to a new reality. An example above all: delivery times and information on how to use our wheels thanks to the use of parameters. Our sector, like many others, has this big problem, it takes weeks, sometimes months for the customer to receive the order.
Disorganization is the scourge of many companies, it is the result of an old mentality, when competitors were few and the challenge was local.Today this isn’t the case, today you are confronted with the world, today your competitors are everywhere and they are countries that are much “hungrier” than ours, they are young, leaner, faster countries.I am a child of this time and I know that today, the speed and the technical consulting service we give to each of our customers is everything. This is why we guarantee our Polishing Wheels with the Money Back guarantee.
As I said I have been in this sector for 30 years and I have participated in epochal changes, just think that when I started working, customer orders were received by fax. Today everything has changed. You receive them by email, WhatsApp, Instagram, Messenger, the speed with which information is exchanged is incredible, a real interactivity between the customer and the producer. Thirty years ago when I started working it was enough to have a good product, today not, today the minimum is to have a good product, but then you have to give much more to your customers.
What exactly do you need to give your customers more? If having a great product isn’t enough, what else do you need?
Need everything else!
First of all, the speed of production is fundamental, as I explained to you before, we guarantee the glassworks the shipment in 48 hours on the products we have in stock and then we need advice. We don’t just sell Polishing Wheels, but our Wheels also come with the parameters of use, so that for your specific machine, for your specific glass (Monolithic, Stratified, Low Emissivity, TPF, Ceramic Glass, etc) for your specific process to be carried out you have the parameters to use our Polishing Wheels in a super-performing way. What we offer is a solution, not just a Polishing Wheels. It sounds like just words, but this is the real focus of our work. If you plan to sell a polishing wheel, once it has been delivered to the customer, your job is done. If you think of selling solutions, when you sell a wheel your work begins, because from that moment on you are next to the customer to make him get exactly what he wants.
The customer helps us to develop our wheel and we help him improve the quality of his work. In this way there is a mutual relationship that helps everyone to improve and create something unique and fast, where quality and consistency of results are the essential prerogatives. The value of the work is determined precisely by how you get the result both in terms of speed of execution and quality of polish, this applies to all sectors and not only in polishing wheels. If you want something that is worth little, you pay little if you want something that is worth a lot, you have to pay the right price commensurate with the number of meters and the level of polish that always and constantly guarantees. Continuous comparison is essential to always improve.
It seems that in your vision of things it is essential to develop a relationship, constant communication with the customer to achieve a common goal. Is that so?
That’s right.
My goal is to develop a relationship, but not only with the Glass Factory, also with the Distributor and with the Manufacturer of machines all over the world. Compared to my competitors, I accept only one Distributor per area, my Polishing Wheels cannot be sold by anyone as everyone else does, but in each area we have only one Distributor of reference. In this way we create a true lasting relationship. It is clear that in the short term the more people sell your products, the more you earn, but I want to think in the long term and have companies that communicate directly with us to get feedback and know how our Polishing Wheels behave directly in that reference market.
As I said my family has been in glass since 1921, I personally have been in this sector for 30 years, this has allowed me to understand what are the mistakes that are generally made and avoid making them in my company, in the M.L.I. “Italian Polishing Wheels”. For me it is essential that the glass factories I work with are satisfied with my wheels and my way of working, the same goes for Distributors and Machine Builders. For example: if you are a Distributor in Russia and 10 other Distributors in your area sell exactly the same polishing wheels as you do, how do you negotiate with the customer?
What weapons do you have to choose you rather than the “rival” Distributor?
The only tool you have in that case is the price war, you have to lower it more than your competitor lowers it and so the customer chooses you. I believe that this is the worst thing that can be created, for this reason I have only 1 Distributor per commercial area, to develop together a true technical – commercial relationship, made up of joint exhibitions, customer visits, a constructive comparison to constantly improve the quality of everything we do.
Earlier I was talking about the “old mentality”. The old mentality sees things in a static way, once it has found a good wheels it remains the same forever, and it has always been. I believe that if you think so today you are dead or at least you have little hope, today you must know that you are old after a month, that you must continue to innovate, experiment, study, research, evolve.
We in our small way are always looking for new materials and new solutions, we work both on the process and on the materials continuously, we have a research and development department in contact with the University of Bologna that helps and supports us in this work and we must think that we are very lucky.
Speaking of evolution you have invested a lot in the search for innovative materials, why all this research?
Exactly for the reason I mentioned earlier, you must always try to look beyond.
When I started producing Polishing Wheels I looked for innovative products, I didn’t want to put in my Polishing Cup Wheels a substance that all wheel manufacturers used and which is called Moca. Moca is such a toxic and dangerous substance that Europe has included it in the list of substances that from the end of 2020 it can no longer be marketed and produced. I have never put it in my polishing wheels and I paid the price for it. In fact, at the beginning my wheels broke, we could not find a non-carcinogenic substance to replace the Moca. It was a very bad time, customers called me because the wheels broke and I had no idea how to solve the problem. I think I’ve never been as desperate as 2 years ago.
Then the turning point.
The collaboration with the University of Bologna opened our minds and after dozens and dozens of tests we found the solution.We must say thanks above all to one Professor in particular (whose name I deliberately do not mention) who has followed us along this long journey.Thanks to their expertise, today we can make a breakthrough in this sector with raw materials never used by anyone in this field, unique processes and tailor-made machinery to perform our production process.
Today our Cup Polishing Wheels are super resistant both mechanically and to heat, even in hot countries such as Asia, South America or the Arab countries, our wheels are very good. All our Polishing Wheels are born with the Standard Rigid Plastic Plate, that is our strength and is what differentiates us from other wheel manufacturers. Without even 1 more, and this is our differentiating plus, our Polishing Cup Wheels have a rigid plate, our competitors instead make you pay dearly for it. The reason why I made this decision is that I want all my Polishing Wheels to be fine, I don’t want to make Series A and Series B Wheels, but I want every customer when buying my wheels to be sure that have a great product. The level of polish we have achieved is very bright and the duration is excellent, comparable, and for certain types of processing even greater, to the most well-known Italian polishing wheels on the market. For all these reasons I must really say thank you to those who believed in me when things went wrong and those who allowed us to continue working and wanted to test our masses despite having had problems in the past.
We have suffered a lot, but we have focused on the most important weapon, continuous research, constant study. Initially we paid the price of innovation. Doing something new also means accepting failure which is as great as the goals you set yourself.
Do you think it is really possible to reach a green turning point in the glass sector?
I think it is possible in the long term, for now I am happy that Europe has banned a substance like Moca that I have never put on the wheels, it means that the direction is the right one, it means seeing in advance what the market is going to do. requires.
Ten years ago, would you have ever thought of setting up a company of polishing wheels?
Absolutely not, I was sure that I would spend my entire working life in the family business, and I was happy with that.
Destiny is sometimes strange, however, and has plans for us that we had not foreseen, this means living. If I hadn’t had the courage to leave something certain for something new and insecure but innovative, I would never have created M.L.I. “Mole Lucidanti Italiane” and I would not have understood what it means to fully take responsibility for your decisions and start from scratch.
Starting a new project already having a clear vision of what I want it to become and taking care every day of my projects, dreams, people who trust me in my company, to create something great together, something that becomes every day bigger. This has made me change as a person and has changed my way of facing life, I am always someone who likes risk and accepting challenges, but today I am much more concrete and able to give solutions.
Speaking of challenges, we are developing in our research department a unique process and a product that no one has yet made in the world of polishing, I am very satisfied with my Polishing Wheels, but I always want to look beyond, because there is no limit to improvement. for those who have the courage and the ability to never feel like they have arrived.
