Pasquale Natuzzi

Pasquale Natuzzi (Matera, 24 March 1940) is an Italian entrepreneur and stylist, founder and chairman of the Natuzzi Group. In his 2008 biography Natuzzi Un divano a Wall Street, Agnese Sinisi considered Natuzzi to be one of the most important entrepreneurs in the history of southern Italy and in the upholstered furniture sector.

Born in Matera, he was the second-born of seven children. His father Vitantonio was a small carpenter, his mother Annunziata Tritto owned a small grocery store. After the early years spent in Matera, Natuzzi family moved to Taranto, Puglia. They were the hard years following the Second World War.

In that times even children had to help their families: Pasquale was still a child when he used to help his mother in the store and work as shop assistant in his father's carpentry. At 15 he became an apprentice in the workshop of his friend upholsterer. Here, after having seen this craftsman at work, with his dexterity and his gestures, he fell in love with what would have become the work of his life: to manufacture sofas.

In 1959 Natuzzi started on his own and started his first workshop for the production of sofas and armchairs: the Natuzzi company was born. In 1962 he moved to his hometown Matera, taking the advice of his father’s friend, who had told him to move to the “subterranean city” because there was a lack of upholsterers. Before long, however, his staff returned to Taranto and Pasquale Natuzzi, not finding substitutes, decided to open a furniture store.

The commercial experience lasted five years, after which Natuzzi returned to his old love and set up a small company that slowly begun to grow. In 1972 he founded the Natuzzi Salotti srl, always based in Matera. A year later, a short circuit set fire to the plant in Matera. Natuzzi was obliged to relocate the production in the factory of Santeramo in Colle (Bari). Overdrawn and without the support of banks, Pasquale Natuzzi started over in a plant still under construction, forced to sleep there because doors and windows lacked. The productions started immediately and the first delivery was carried out already one week after the burning. That factory is now the headquarters of the Natuzzi Group.

By the mid-1970s, Pasquale Natuzzi participated for the first time at a furniture trade fair in Bari, where he took the first contacts with some customers of the Middle East: Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan. Already in 1976, the 60% of the company’s turnover came from those countries, while the remaining part came from Italy. In 1977 Pasquale Natuzzi participated for the first time at the furniture fair in Cologne, where he exhibited a single leather sofa. Here he got in touch with a major European distribution chain, the Belgian Universe du Cuir, allowing him to export to Northern Europe and specialize in the niche of the leather sofa.

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