I want to talk to the owner!

It was a phrase that often accompanied the first years of activity in that distant October of 1980, when customers, in order to beg for discounts on the few hundred lire they owed us, resorted to this expedient to embarrass us.

As eighteen-year-olds just out of high school, united by a friendship in which we shared values and cultural interests, we laid the foundations of a unique business venture in the 1980s in the screen-printing sector: the Cooperativa L'immagine.

At the time, it was one of the rarest examples of youth entrepreneurship in an area of southern Italy that was still not very much inclined to private initiative.

The premises were barely thirty square metres on the outskirts of Molfetta, in a street whose name already foreshadowed something ominous: via Francesco Nullo.

"Nullo" (meaning "null" was exactly what we had: enthusiasm and the desire to do, to build, to share kept us company.

The first few years of activity were very hard and tiring, we didn’t have a penny in our pockets, because what little money we did collect we used to reinvest in equipment to improve our production department: at weekends I worked as a dishwasher in local restaurants.

Then our paths diverged: the Cooperativa L'Immagine formally changed and and I, together with Stefano Salvenini and Gadaleta Giovanni, continued the adventure.

Then Giovanni left us for his own way in the 1990s, when a severe economic crisis hit our country (1992/1993) while we were in the midst of building our current factory.

Once again, we found ourselves at a crossroads: close the doors or roll up our sleeves and start again?

The ingredients used were tenacity, a pinch of recklessness and vision...

...and here we are in 2024!