Following the addition of Fasten.it to the BearingNet and FluidPowerNet family in 2023, we speak to co-founder Carlo Ferri and get to know more about the company and services.
Fasten.it officially joined the BearingNet family in December 2023. Carlo Ferri (founder and previous owner), Federica Capelli and Vera Scaccabarozzi, who both work in Sales & Marketing, and are continuing to work with Fasten.it and BearingNet. They came over from beautiful Lake Como to BearingNet HQ to get to know us and start the integration of our companies.
Whilst visiting, we found some time to speak to Carlo to get to know more about the company, its history and the people and services.
What is Fasten.it and what services does it provide?
Fasten.it is the portal for fasteners and fixing elements. We provide services to thousands of platform users globally, allowing them to perform at their best in the fastener market, thanks to many useful and innovative tools.
We also pride ourselves on the promotional content we create for our users. Newsletters are a big part of Fasten.it, allowing customers to tell their story to the industry.
How many companies are on Fasten.it and where are they from?
Currently we have over 6,000 users on Fasten.it. These include paid and unpaid members from a wide range of companies and backgrounds. This consists of distributors, manufacturers, service users, fastener production companies and more, all from small family businesses up to global chain businesses.
Tell us a bit about the history of the company…
Fasten.it was established in 2003 as a search engine to help fastener companies find the items they were looking for. I set up the company together with Paolo Capelli. Having worked in the fastener industry since 1980, I had gained a lot of experience working as a sales manager and travelling around the world; mainly in Europe but having the opportunity to meet customers worldwide.
I started building the business with the help of Paolo (I had the industry knowledge and Paolo had the technical expertise that was needed to build the platform). Paolo was a friend I met through the software house in my previous role.
The first year of the project was creating and building up the search database, as well as offering support and small advertising opportunities. As Fasten.it got bigger, we introduced many more services, including procurement, surplus stock, industry norms, marketplace, product documentation and ‘businesses for sale’.
Who makes up the Fasten.it team?
We were a small team located in Erba, just 20 minutes away from the beautiful Lake Como (Italy).
There was myself and Paolo, who sadly passed away in 2021. This was a very difficult time, losing both my business partner and technical expertise, as well as having to face a worldwide pandemic. However, with the help of friends and family we managed to continue and build up a new team.
This team included myself who started the company in 2003, Federica (Paolo’s sister) started working with us after she finished university in 2007, her role was sales/marketing and customer care. Then in 2021 we took on Andrea in marketing, Marco in Tech and Vera who had a background in tradeshows and translation services.
Talking of COVID, how did Fasten.it cope with the recent pandemic?
Surprisingly, we saw a high growth in registration to Fasten.it during this period. Italy was one of the worst affected countries in Europe with COVID-19, and many small companies were closing throughout. Fasten.it however, was still very much in demand, and therefore we continued to grow as companies looked for new revenue sources.
Post Covid was a different story for us. After Paolo had gone we hit a roadblock, and we did not know how to move forward without him. We could not throw nearly 20 years of hard work away, so this is when we found our new team as mentioned earlier. We started working with Marco, a friend and ex-colleague, who helped us greatly with software development, Andrea, was a very good at managing the social media side of the business, and Vera, our fluent German speaker. This allowed us to continue to provide the Fasten.it services and grow even further.
How did the BearingNet partnership arise and are you looking forward to working alongside the team?
We met a few members of the BearingNet team at the Stuttgart fair, and we are looking forward to seeing what the future brings for the three brands (Fasten.it, BearingNet and FluidPowerNet).
Joining BearingNet is a great move for Fasten.it, and also came at a very good time in my life. I am ready to retire, but giving up your ‘baby’ is something that is so hard to do, it was great to be able to pass it on to a company in a very similar field and to know that there was the opportunity for some of the staff to continue working with Fasten.it.
Federica and Vera will continue to run the day-to-day activities of Fasten.it from Como with the assistance of the BearingNet team.
We are excited for future projects, including the marketplace which we aim to grow and for it to become the engine of the Fasten.it platform. Watch this space!
Visit the Fasten.it website here or contact them on info@fasten.it
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