Milan, capital of innovation
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Milan is a synonym of Design. Milan has historically played a key role in this field, as native or adopted city of most of the artists and professionals who have made Italy one of the greatest centres of design excellence in the world (Alessandro Mendini and Achille Castiglioni, just to mention a few). Furthermore, Milan is currently the most innovation-oriented Italian city, keeping up with the main European capitals. Such combination between a solid tradition and a strong forward-looking approach makes it a fertile ground for new projects and talents.

Supperscene: dinner on display
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Each of the projects carried out during the first 14 years of business of Spazio Pontaccio has left a big or small mark. The most memorable one was the SupperScene, organised during the 2014 Design Week: a multisensory experience of a dinner prepared by a Michelin star chef and set up in the windows of the Showroom with our furniture and objects, all unique pieces created by artists and designers especially for the occasion. The top leaders of international design have taken part in this dinner on display, that has been selected by Wallpaper* as one of the 5 best projects of that edition.

From curators to publishers
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The 2015 Design Week was definitely a turning point for us, with the presentation of our first collection of furniture and objects signed by Spazio Pontaccio. This new chapter has marked the transition from a role of simple curator to a double one of curator and publisher. Now, almost a year later, such role is teaching us a lot and at the same time is giving us great satisfaction!

Salone and Fuorisalone
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The Salone is a strategic place from a business point of view, as it attracts professional figures from different companies; however, this might also represent a limit, as it is almost exclusively frequented by insiders, which makes it less open to news and external inputs. On the contrary, the scope of the Fuorisalone is much more open, engaging and wide. It allows everyone to come into contact with any kind of reality (from well-established brands to emerging yet talented designers) proposing a wider blending of many different environments. Of course, you need to have a background in the field to distinguish the various inputs you receive.

How the public has changed over the years
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Today’s public is more attentive and most of all more experienced (thanks to the greater possibility to access information through the web). It is also more demanding: they have everything, they take the quality of the things they buy for granted. Today they want to be amazed, they want to live a memorable shopping experience and especially own objects that emotionally involve them and are able to tell a story.

Social networks are also essential. If you are not connected, you don’t exist. Today this is the only means through which you can bring your own experience everywhere and show everyone your work.

Events and/or presentations
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We have always used to design at least two events a year. Occasions in which we involved our best customers, architects and journalists to presented them our news. Over the years, we have started to feel that this approach was too static and it hardly made such occasions memorable. We then started to organise more closed and exclusive events distributed over the year. Private evening events for a limited number of guests, breakfasts with the press, one-to-one meetings with architects and top customers. Occasions in which there was always a story to tell, but this story was always specifically cut on the person we were going to meet. We tell at least one new story every month through our shop windows.