Galtrucco

Historic brand name of Italian shops specialized in fabrics. It is a small empire that started with a single cart that was at first pushed by hand and then, over time, pulled by a donkey and then by a horse. It was created by the Piedmont-born Lorenzo Galtrucco (1850-1912). An assistant, at the age of 8, to a travelling salesman who would beat him, then adopted by a greengrocer, he managed to save 270 liras out of the pay he received during his military service. He used the money to purchase fustians, knitwear, and cottons, and began to go from market to market in the area of Canavese and Lomellina. At the age of 35 he opened his first shop, in Robbio, near Pavia. When he died, he also had some “small shops” in Novara. To his 11 children, he said: “Don’t let yourselves be led by a desire for easy and quick earnings, don’t try to expand the business by associating with strangers. Go one step a time, helping each other: you will accomplish any goal.” His heirs, guided, gradually, by Severino, Domenico, and Giuseppe, put this advice into practice (the company is still in the hands of the family) and almost all their goals were achieved. In 1913, a shop was opened in Turin; in 1919, on via San Gregorio in Milan, a warehouse was opened in order to sell wholesale and to serve as a headquarters; in 1923, a store was opened under the Southern Arcades of Piazza Duomo in Milan which would become the symbol of Galtrucco and later, after being destroyed by bombs during World War II, be rebuilt in 1949 according to plans by Guglielmo Ulrich; and in 1926 and in 1936 there were new shop windows in Trieste and Rome. At the beginning of the new century, the company, led by the third generation (Lorenzo, Domenico, Giancarlo, and Marisa Galtrucco) sold the shop in Piazza Duomo, Milan.