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Introducing Luigi: Luigi is a 45-year old Italian from Tour du Mont in north Italy, which is very famous for making truffles. These are very specific and special types of truffles that are so difficult to find that either pigs or dogs are used. Luigi has been in the food and hospitality industry for a number of years, but had always been dealing with local people. Picture Luidi as a guy who is pretty tough, pretty rough, has rough hands. He is not a ‘smoother’ but more of a hands-on guy, someone you can easily picture working in the field. He is typically Italian, and although he has a bald head already he has very dark hair on the sides, and is small, even a bit stocky. He looks very healthy considering he used to work outdoors quite a lot. Luigi is not an academic type but more a someone who works with his bare hands. Luigi is quite introverted, not someone you would see talking to clients or talking to anyone much at all. Imagine Luigi at family celebrations being the older dad who sits there, enjoys the wine, observes the festivities but says nothing throughout the whole time. Having said that, once he gets started on truffles he has lots of details and anecdotes, and one can really see that he has a huge passion for this kind of food.
Discovering the business idea: Luigi came to London for the first time with his wife in 2007. He is not really into travelling, so this was his first major trip outside of Italy for many years. The trip was intended as a gift to his wife for their silver wedding anniversary- 25 years of being married. Luigi himself speaks no English at all, but his wife speaks a bit of English as she used to work in hotels in Italy. He realised how expensive truffles are in London. They are also expensive in Italy, but much more expensive in London, especially in restaurants. In London Luigi and his wife naturally went into Italian delicacy stores and specialty food shops such as Harrods and saw that truffles are sold at extortionate prices. It occurred to Luigi that it would be a good business for him since he knows a number of truffle farmers in Italy. Truffle farmers harvest truffles using animals and either sell them on the local market, or to local restaurants and local dealers, who then export it. Luigi realised that comparing to how much you could buy these truffles for it would be a good sideline business to sell these truffles in the UK. 
Starting the business: As soon as Luigi went back to Italy he got started on his business idea very quickly. Just as his personality would suggest. Luigi isn’t into writing business plans or thinking about concepts; he is pragmatic, hands-on, and gets on with it straight away. He knows a couple of people in London, friends from Italy that work in hotels, which put him in touch with the local purchasing manager and the food and department. He also hired a junior partner, his nephew, who speaks English quite well. Together they talk to potential clients and show their products. They fly to London from Turin. Buyers showed a lot of interest in Luigi's superb quality truffles. His truffles are fresh and have the reassuring feeling that they come from a direct seller rather than at wholesale. For the hotels this is an interesting deal, it’s a nice touch and a top quality product.
One step up: Luigi worked this way for a while but as his customer base grew and grew he realised that since the business was working so well he needed to formalise it. This was the right observation to make- it is important to see that because his customer base is growing, the business can no longer be run as a cash business, and that they needed a solid and proper set-up. Once Luigi realised this he came to the conclusion with his nephew that they need to either set up a business in Italy or in the UK. Once they had done some research they could see that setting up a business is a lot easier in the UK that in it is Italy. There is a lot less bureaucracy, it is cheaper, more flexible, and local to their clients, which means that they can just write cheques, transactions are straightforward and simple, and there is no international banking involved.
Finding St Matthew: With this in mind, Luigi and his nephew did some research on the Internet and came across St Matthew's website, where they could see that we deal with a lot of Italian clients. They contacted us, got a free consultation with our Italian consultant and very quickly realised that we provide the solution they need. One needs to bear in mind that they were both inexperienced with business set-ups and formalities, so they needed help with everything: setting up a UK Ltd, dealing with taxes, opening bank accounts, bookkeeping and everything else we do as part of our standard package for clients. Furthermore, they had issue to consider with the Italian tax situation. As they make money in the UK they needed to find a way to made sure to deal with this properly.
The business now: Over the years the relationship between St Matthew and Luigi has become something more than just bookkeeping. Whenever Luigi and his nephew come to London they bring small pieces of truffles for us. The business is doing really well considering it was never intended to be a really big organisation. Luigi generates around £50.000 a year. They buy the produce quite cheaply and make a very good profit on that - they don’t have an ambition to make this a huge business. However, they have a website and the company has an Italian name. The whole exercise with St Matthew saved them significant amounts of money; firstly in comparison to Italy in terms of tax and administrative efforts and secondly in the UK as there is a fixed fee approach. Equally as important, they have received, and still do receive, a lot of support from our Italian consultants, helping them along the way.
 Find out more about our Head Office London or Head Office Dublin Service: To find out more about how the Head Office London Service that Lars is using with us could fascilitate your own business situation, we invite you to join us in an initial consultation over the phone. This includes an assessment and analysis of your situation. Our services apply to many business related situations, however, if we come to the conclusion that our service is not the right solution for you, we will not take you on as a client.
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