Anniversaries, the Finiper Group celebrates 50 years of innovation

Fifty years of innovation and uniqueness. This is the mood of Finiper, the hypermarket chain founded in 1974 by Marco Brunelli, one of the protagonists of large-scale retail trade in Italy and among the founders of Esselunga together with the brothers Guido and Bernardo Caprotti. Of those years Brunelli likes to remember «it was I who brought Nelson Rockefeller to Italy» who became the majority shareholder of the Ibec group from which «Italian Supermarkets» was born in 1957 which later became Esselunga. A few years later Marco Brunelli and Guido Caprotti founded the embryo of what would become Supermercati GS.

After a few decades, Brunelli opened one of the first hypermarkets in Italy in 1974 in Montebello Della Battaglia, in the Pavia area, and in the same year established Finiper Spa, the Group’s financial holding company. Only two years later the led group inaugurated the first shopping center in Italy in Cremona. A quantum leap for the time and inspired by the models seen in the USA, France and Northern Europe because as Marco Brunelli says «The best way to build the future is to invent it».

The first stages

The success of the Iper concept inserted in a shopping center leads to the opening of centers in Magenta, Varese, Savignano sul Rubicone, in Romagna. The sign also arrives in Marche and Abruzzo. Among the strong points are the fresh and very fresh products as well as innovation, the ability to lead the way compared to competitors by focusing on services and catering with pizzerias, cafes, ice cream parlors and owned restaurants, managed by a company of the group. In 1994, for example, the first self-service checkouts were installed in the historic hypermarket of Montebello della Battaglia. In the meantime, the Group worked on the redevelopment of large industrial areas and in 1996 purchased the Portello area in Milan where the historic Alfa Romeo factories stood from Fintecna, the holding company of the Iri group which handles privatization in the infrastructure sector. It is the start of an operation worth 120 billion lire at the time, around 60 million euros, which will lead to the breaking of the paradigm: until now shopping centers were built outside the perimeter of metropolises. Iper Portello will be a city hypermarket, the center of a major urban and commercial relaunch project which will be inaugurated in 2004.

Meanwhile, in 2002 the Group purchased the Unes market network from which «Il Viaggiator Goloso» was born in 2015, an intuition of top manager Mario Gasbarrino who created a brand dedicated to premium products and local specialties. It is a success and further confirmation of Brunelli’s ability to overcome himself every time by looking beyond. Once the Portello construction site was closed, it was the turn of the Arese construction site because in 2001 the Group purchased the 2 million square meter site on which the Alfa Romeo factory stood in Arese. It is the largest operation launched by Marco Brunelli who was 74 years old at the time. His intention was to create a large shopping center with a “Hyper the Big I” hypermarket. A shopping center that would become the point of comparison in the sector. The works lasted 15 years, work that Marco Brunelli followed personally. His desire is: to create a shopping center that is not only welcoming but with lots of natural light, a space for families with low environmental impact complete with Gold level Leed certification. The project is in the hands of star architect: Davide Padoa, CEO of Design International, in collaboration with Michele de Lucchi and Arnaldo Zappa. The code name of the project is «Arese shopping center» but the definitive name is chosen by the owner: “Il Centro” with over 200 shops, more than 25 catering spaces and the Iper hypermarket. «A 700 million euro operation» as Marco Brunelli told Il Sole-24 Ore in one of the very rare meetings he grants to journalists. In parallel with these large operations, work is being done on the customer services front. Over the years, vertical offers have been created such as, for example, IperStation (fuel distributors), IperDrive (online shopping), IperBenessere (personal care), IperPiù (service space), IperSalute (telemedicine), IperMobility (car rental and then top-ups electric cars).

Revolutionary ideas

In 2018 another revolutionary idea from Marco Brunelli. Create a Skidome a few meters from the Center, an indoor facility which according to the project will have three ski slopes with a height difference of 65 metres, a length of 300 meters and a width of 60 metres. A 300 million project and one of the few in Europe that also included a restaurant, a commercial area, a 4-star hotel with around a hundred rooms. The project was put on hold by Brunelli himself the following year when the possibility of Sunday closures of shopping centers loomed, a threat that led to the cancellation of a large Ikea store in the Finiper perimeter of Arese. Meanwhile in Monza there is the construction site of »Il Maestoso» which offers a new formula: on the ground floor an Iper and on the upper floor «La Corte del Maestoso by Iper», a restaurant space with pizzeria, grill, Italian and oriental cuisine , a brewery and a wine shop. In the Covid years, the group worked on the expansion of the Fiordaliso shopping center, in the southern area of ​​Milan, with an extension and a new food court created by expanding and redeveloping the old restaurant area. Today «Iper La grande i» has 22 points of sale in 4 regions.