Barista Magazine

OCT-NOV 2012

Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.

Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/84829

Contents of this Issue

Navigation

Page 25 of 87

MARCHE, ITALY all these efforts will have been for naught. Having a long-term plan, looking down the proverbial road, has played an important role in taking Nuova Simonelli to the place it currently occupies in specialty coffee, specifically as the official espresso machine sponsor of the World Barista Championship (WBC). The company landed the coveted three-year sponsorship in 2008, and then last year, they won it again for another three-year term. It did not happen by accident. Though it has been part of a plan, it hasn't always been easy, and the company devoted significant time, resources and energy into it. Cosimo explained that the company began seriously considering bidding on the sponsorship back in 2003. "In 2001," he says, "we looked at what was happening in the [specialty coffee] market, and that happened to be when the WBC was starting. We decided specialty coffee was the future of coffee. [And that] excellence in coffee is recognized by the WBC." So in 2003, the Nuova Simonelli team began designing and testing machines that would meet and surpass the technical standards for the WBC. "We felt we had something to contribute, " Cosimo says. In 2005, the company submitted a machine to the WBC for consideration The original Nuova Simonelli factory, above, is still in use. It houses offi ces and an interactive exhibit of machines built by Nuova Simonelli and its other brand, Victoria Arduino. for the machine sponsorship, but the closed-door session ended without a chance for Nuova Simonelli to claim the sponsorship. In 2008, in Vancouver, Canada, they were back again. This time they brought a task force with the machine, and they won the sponsorship. The twist was that it was the same machine that they had brought to Oslo, Norway, in 2005. "We knew it was going to be hard [to win the sponsorship], and we took a long-term view," says Cosimo. "That it's a process." And now with the sponsorship under their belt, he says, "I see that there is a new attitude toward us by the baristas." It' s more than that, though: The sponsorship has been a net benefit for the company in absolute terms, too, as Nuova Simonelli has doubled in size since 2007. "The WBC is the biggest brand in [specialty] coffee, And the barista is a key component to promoting specialty coffee. "Don't fight the barista," he says is the underlying philosophy of all of Nuova " Cosimo says. 26 barista magazine

Articles in this issue

Links on this page

view archives of Barista Magazine - OCT-NOV 2012