Between its 15 offices abroad and those in Italy, LaPresse employsabout 400 people worldwide. "From September we will open a permanent facility in Spain, a very promising market, like Morocco. And then we are looking at Germany and Britain and other European countries," explained the publisher
“In the midst of the pandemic, when the world was at a standstill and there was no talk of growth and development but often only mere survival we focused on a policy of further international development that led us to open or upgrade as many as 15 offices abroad. Currently out of a global turnover of about 65 million 65 percent of revenues come from our foreign activities and only 35 percent from Italy, which still remains our target market.” Thus in an ‘interview with Corriere della Sera Marco Durante, founder and publisher of LaPresse, explains the next strategies of the group, a company, he explains, that has developed along several business lines.
“There is the press agency part, of which the main Italian and foreign publishing groups are clients, both print and video and which employs about 100 journalists in Italy, out of a total of about 400 employees worldwide. We then have a division specializing in videos and video clips, and in this segment our main Italian clients are obviously Rai and Mediaset and La7. But we are also a photo agency, and that was the beginning of our business. We give coverage to major Italian and international sporting events, from the World Cup in soccer and skiing to more local competitions.”
“We have our expertise and strength in distribution,” Durante stresses, “We are di able to take an event that takes place, let’s say in Japan, anywhere in the world in a very short time and give our clients international visibility they would not otherwise have. Underlying this model is a strategic partnership agreement with the Associated Press, of which Durante is a preferred partner. Next steps? “Still abroad. From September we will open a permanent facility in Spain, a very promising market, as is Morocco. And then we are looking at Germany and Great Britain and other European countries.”
“The secret of talent,” Durante stresses, “is to arrive a minute before the others. He recounts. “I studied a lot. Always with humility, when I was 16 I was unloading boxes at the Porta Palazzo market in Turin for 500 liras, a cappuccino and a brioche. Today I am the head of a multinational company, I have five degrees, and every month I pay hundreds of salaries. For me this is the growth of a person, true success. And I have achieved it through determination, my strongest hidden value: I never give up. “In life you can fall several times but what makes the difference is always getting back up and getting back on the path.”
“The sports experience, the passions for swimming and soccer that I experienced as a professional, were a great support in my work when I founded the LaPresse agency in 1994,” Durante adds.
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