TB Engineering, Liguria company specialized in consulting and trading, manages and coordinates a network of suppliers headquartered in Asia, especially in China. Therefore, it faced the lockdown with a commitment on two fronts. First, when lockdowns concerned China, to guarantee customers in Italy the necessary supplies for their activities. Immediately after, when restrictive measures regarded Italy, it supported Italian customers (whose production was instead stopped in that phase) to schedule the staggering of deliveries and shipments and, simultaneously, to lay the bases for a safe restart.
Today, as always, it operates at its customers’ side, to provide them with support and consulting to face the market in this new unusual scenario.
Laura Pesce, Marketing and Communication manager in TB Engineering, traces back the experience of this period. Starting precisely from the moment when all began.
“The Chinese lockdown was objectively a very critical time because we had to use our full experience to avoid our customers were struck by a very onerous backlash, owing to the situation. The Chinese lockdown coincided with the stop phase that is universally known as Chinese New Year, three weeks during which everything stops in China, and then we had already organized the work to provide our customers with a significant stock of goods, irrespective of the pandemic. It was a complex period but we succeeded in managing it through our Chinese branch and our colleagues. Due to them, despite the Chinese lockdown that was even more restrictive than the Italian one, our customers never stopped working, so avoiding very heavy consequences of line stop or work slowdown”.
Therefore, no activity interruption occurred for TB Engineering customers, especially hob manufacturers, which could rely on the necessary components for their work: free-standing and built-in stove grills, and all that gravitates around that world, such as timers, ceramic heating elements, knobs and roasters.
Afterwards, there was the stop time for the Italian industry. With customers in smart work, TB Engineering managed the staggering of deliveries and shipments, so that authorized warehouses could go on receiving goods.
But not only. In view of the restart and of all protocols to comply with, the company strived to support its customers also in the provisioning of surgical and FFP2 masks.
“It is a “side” initiative of the company, stemmed from the will of the founder and managing director of TB Engineering, the engineer Fabrizio Galluzzi, who is also president of the service industry of Confindustria Genoa – Laura Pesce tells- Assessing how the provisioning of important devices for workers’ health was becoming complicated also for member companies in his field, Galluzzi operated through his contacts, putting his experience in search, selection and import of products from Asia at disposal of the local community”. When he identified a qualified supplier and verified products were reliable, correctly manufactured and correctly certified, Galluzzi ascertained his customers’ interest, which immediately proved very lively, and then TB Engineering committed to the import of masks. “Our initiative was excellently evaluated by Confindustria Genoa, which signed an agreement with TB Engineering to allow sector companies to restart under safe conditions” Laura Pesce proudly confirms.
Nowadays, with the production restart made possible, what will happen to the market should be still verified: what the emergency repercussions will be, how consumptions will recover in the next future. “In September, we will restart working hard at TB Cookware, the business branch dedicated to the marketing of enamelled cast iron crockery” adds Laura Pesce, who personally takes care of the young ambitious project.
Moreover, in general, TB Engineering steadily holds the helm, for the achievement of facilitations for its customers. “Currently we have suspended the activity of travel businesses to China, which generally leads us to assess suppliers, processes and products on the spot. However, the severe control of these aspects goes on, even if from remote, through the rigorous quality control activity carried out by the Quality Manager Nicola Mura: who works with us must suit a western management system – Laura Pesce ends – Outsourced components comply with our parameters: they are made in China but manufactured according to Italian standards.”
