Davines Group’s, Azimut|Benetti’s Presidents Win Ernst & Young Awards

MILAN — Davide Bollati, president of Davines Group, received a recognition for his company’s sustainable business model by consulting firm EY on Thursday.

This was one of the awards the consulting firm annually assigns to acknowledge the best Italian entrepreneurs according to several categories, spanning from global growth to innovation. Giovanna Vitelli, president of leading luxury yacht manufacturer Azimut|Benetti Group, was awarded the top prize and named EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year.

Bollati received the prize in the “Sustainable Business Model” category for “having guided the company toward a holistic growth approach that considers the impact on the environment, communities and stakeholders” and for “placing ethics and sustainability at the center of decisions [and] as key factors in the success of its business,” said EY in a statement.

The Parma-based beauty company, which was founded in 1983 by the Bollati family and operates professional hair care brand Davines and skin care label Comfort Zone, has a longtime expertise in developing high-performance, natural formulations, recycled and reusable packaging and implementing environmentally friendly initiatives. These assets earned the firm both credibility and an advantage at a time when every business started to tweak its structure and product offering in a sustainable direction, and were instrumental in serving the ever-increasing appetite of international customers for natural beauty products.

These elements propelled Davines Group’s sales, which continue to grow double-digit year after year. To be sure, in 2023 total sales increased 14.3 percent to 263.5 million euros compared to 2022, which enabled Davines Group to make its debut in WWD Beauty Inc’s Top 100 ranking of the world’s largest beauty companies earlier this year.

Davines Group’s distinctive holistic, sustainable mission was sealed by the B Corp certification in 2016 and an even higher certification score in 2020. These add to a streak of eco-minded projects, ranging from joining forces with fellow certified B Corps to establish the B Corp Beauty Coalition aimed at promoting systemic change in the beauty industry by improving its sustainability standards through collective action, to teaming with Rodale Institute, a U.S.-based nonprofit that specializes in regenerative organic agriculture. As result of the latter, the company expanded its Davines Village headquarters to include a regenerative organic farm, research center and education hub aimed at exploring how these farming practices can influence the supply chain of personal care products while simultaneously helping to mitigate climate change.

“In a moment of great uncertainty, even at a geopolitical level, both for our country and for the international situation, I think that maintaining coherence on this topic is essential,” Bollati told WWD before the award ceremony. “We believe this is the right path and we would like it to be embraced by many other entrepreneurs and public institutions, because we think that it is what needs to be done in today’s world.”

Asked about the EY recognition and the performance of his company, which is projected to report double-digit growth in 2024, too, Bollati said the group is just “harvesting what it seeded many years ago.”

“In nature and in economy, you invest and then you gather. This is a moment of gathering but we’re already thinking of future planting,” said Bollati. The group will continue to focus on themes such as decarbonization — seen as “the mother of all battles,” as Bollati put it — as well as circularity in the cosmetics supply chain, biodiversity and water consumption.

“We want to grow business-wise, but in a contemporary way, meaning reducing our impact,” said the executive, underscoring that the company is exploring expansion in product categories as long as they respect this concept.

According to Bollati, this approach is essential to sustain the “virtuous and coherent growth.” He said the group’s ability in building a strong and engaged community around Davines’ mission is what is ensuring its “strong and organic” performance sales-wise, in addition to the quality of products and scientific approach to formulations.

Not surprisingly, over the years the company attracted the interest of the financial world, but Bollati seems committed to independence.

“The idea is to keep the luxury of being an independent family business that can allow itself to make the choices it believes are right without the constraints that finance often gives in the short term,” said the executive. “Of course there are exceptions, but in general family businesses look farther and when it comes to our values, we feel better in having longer-term vision rather than short-medium perspectives, so we would risk having unnecessary tensions.”

“As a family business, we have the privilege of looking far ahead and creating value over time,” echoed Vitelli. “Today, [creating value] means committing to reducing emissions to make the nautical world more sustainable, inspiring also other key players in the sector. But above all, it means continuing to combine the greatest beauty with the most sophisticated technology.”

Vitelli was named EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year for “having been able to lead and direct the company not only toward a growth in size and profitability, but also for having inspired technological changes, as well as projects focused on sustainability, employee well-being and corporate social responsibility.”

In scooping the 27th edition of the prize, Vitelli follows in the footsteps of the likes of Brunello Cucinelli, founder of the namesake Italian luxury fashion brand; Remo Ruffini, Moncler Group chairman and chief executive officer; Federico Marchetti, former chairman and CEO of Yoox Net-a-porter; Matteo Lunelli, president and CEO of Ferrari Trento and chairman of Altagamma, and Oscar Farinetti, founder of Eataly.