THAT TIME… RENATA, DAUGHTER OF THE FOUNDER OF THE MANDELLI GROUP, TELLS HER CHILDHOOD MEMORIES.
by Dora Marraffa
It arrives with a quick ticking that heralds all its panache. And the smile with which she sits down confirms the radiance and liveliness of Renata Mandelli: the daughter of the progenitor of the Group of the same name really seems to bring with her all the joy inherent in the soul of the BRERA brand .
We asked Mrs. Renata - that's what everyone in the company calls her - to tell us about her childhood memories to go back to the most intimate origins of an entrepreneurial family whose destiny is the bicycle .
Home and shop.
"So, dad started after the war with a mechanical workshop attached to a petrol pump and then, little by little, he moved on to being a wholesaler: we lived upstairs from his office and I remember the smell perfectly of the warehouse and the patter of the circles that I heard as a child at night when I was in bed, I must admit that I was a little afraid of them”.
That fear becomes nostalgia in Mrs. Renata's words as she sees her father who always went around making deliveries... "I often went there too with my mum and, in this regard, I have a very clear memory of that time I made a terrible stop because I had suddenly opened the door of our van while we were going to deliver some bicycles”.
And yes, because Riccardo Mandelli, Renata's father, in his workshop not only fixed cars and motorbikes but also repaired and sold bicycles.
A big heart.
And here Renata remembers having dropped a whole row of bicycles as a child. “I don't know how I did it but they all went down, one after the other”. She smiles with her eyes at the thought of her father in the face of his disaster and goes on to tell how much he had a big heart.
"Dad was a dynamic person, he worked all his life, his work was his passion, but he was also a very generous man: even today there are people who thank me because without his help they would not have made it". And now that Mrs. Renata is 68 years old (carried with an enviable youthful freshness) and continues to work in the company, she never ceases to recommend to her children at the head of the Mandelli Group to keep grandfather Riccardo's legacy alive. “Even if you have to keep up with the times, never forget a little humanity”.
How many peels.
Then Renata goes on to talk about her bike crashes. “Today's children no longer scrape their knees like they used to, while we were always out on our bicycles… I'll never forget the time I tumbled into the irrigation ditch”. The cold he suffered in winter when he went to school by bicycle also remained indelible in his memory. “A cold, a cold! Back then there weren't thermal jackets like today!”.
The baptism of the flower bed.
From the bicycle as a child to the Malaguti Dribbling as a girl up to the current Broadway bike , Renata has never stopped riding two wheels. “Now I like going around by bike with friends and by motorbike (always a Malaguti!) with my husband”. But more than anything else in the world, as a grandmother, she loves watching her grandchildren catapult themselves on their bikes like madmen down the slope from the garage, ending up against the flower bed. “Never without a helmet, though!”.
