The story of this industrial laundry from Romano d’Ezzelino starts in 1976 through a happy combination of work and innovation. Today, the result is an excellent position of the business gained due to high automation standards, personalized customer service and first quality household and table linen supply
In the good old washtub of our great-grandmothers client code numbers were already working well.
Then, together with technological innovations, they actually came along with automation standards requested nowadays from an excellent industrial laundry. It is however information technology evolution of old days’ work ethics, used to “managed” by, which is worth mentioning, washerwomen who until fifty years ago would punctually go to the river banks carrying their loads of linen to wash.
This is one of many thoughts born after a simple visit to Lavanova, an important industrial laundry in Romano d’Ezzelino, Vicenza province. Stefano Gheno, the owner of the business is telling us the beautiful story of a family who reached these high levels of production and organization of work by making the most of work skills passing them from generation to generation and always keeping in mind every single client with their loads, time requested and needs.
The courageous washerwomen on the company’s web site home page photos knew all about it while beating and rinsing bedsheets and tablecloths on the white stones at the river Brenta for those who trusted in their dedication to work. Also Franco Gheno knew that when in 1960 he was founding his company that later transformed those skills into a business based on sacrifice and relations. Even his son Stefano knows that too, happy to show us the results of 50-year investments and commercial practices thanks to which Lavanova transformed itself into an industrial laundry exactly 40 years ago, in 1976. Today, in a 5-thousand-square-meter area, it handles several quintals of linen back and forth to Vicenza, Verona, Padova, Treviso, Udine and Trento provinces.
“It is true – Stefano Gheno confirms – that today everything here is controlled by really high automation standards. It could not be any different as the quality of our service includes a rigorous punctuality of the withdrawal and delivery of linen to hotels and restaurants where the management of linen is of the highest importance”. “In order to reach this objective – the owner of Lavanova explains – our first-class and always updated software for client codes is crucial, among other things”:
Keeping the clients’needs in the center makes this kind of a business successful. “Due to such a substantial centrality – Gheno explains – Lavanova can consider itself a consultant-partner and the service offered for the third parties becomes highly articulated and personalized”. Words chosen perfectly well to introduce the visitor to a magnificent “carousel” managed by thirty employees of the laundry. What we discover is a completely automatized system where washing, transport, ironing and labeling have been assigned and handled by a mini exhibition of excellent brands: wash-continue by Jensen and Kannegiesser, transport system by Montanari and Skema, Milnor washing machines, accessories and equipment by Nuova Folati, together with the precious linen for restaurants supplied by Masa.
“Everything happening here is regulated according to time range and processes tested extremely well – Stefano Gheno clarifies – as it is actually requested by the necessary European Certificate 14065/2009, relative to bio-contamination levels control. Therefore, our staff, qualified through continuous updating courses follows the loads of linen from their arrival to the final delivery which is regulated by client codes application. Such work processes do not involve the manual contact with the linen if not in its minimum degree through simple operations only”.
This means, as we could verify, treatments that keep in mind the history, the needs and time relating to each individual client and a particularly welcoming and an absolutely excellent structure inside the well-known tourist area, the Tre Venezie visited by people from all around the world.
Lavanova does not only supply hotels and restaurants with clean linen. It also provides them with the precious linen from one of the best textile Italian companies, Masa from Cairate, Varese. This is where the everyday experience gained “on the field” takes you.
Lavanova looks forty years old. Actually, it shines forty years old.
by Stefano Ferrio
DETERGO MAGAZINE
APRIL 2016
