Sunlight delicately bathes the tables, chairs, lamps and wooden objects in the Roots Mallorca showroom on a February morning. The room, dominated by old beams between walls of sandstone, radiates a Mediterranean atmosphere while on the first floor, oblivious to this stillness, people are working hard on the production of beautiful furniture.
Alfredo, who started the project twelve years ago in a small workshop in Genoa, looks at everything that surrounds us and recalls his beginnings with a first reflection as luminous as the space: 'if you have a goal, if you know where to go, if you are constant and stubborn like me, in the end you end up fulfilling your dreams. You have to have patience, be very constant and never give up'.
He sounds convinced and honest, he, who started creating his own furniture with reclaimed wood and discarded pallets, and ended up, tired of the shipping sector, exploring a new work horizon. Daring the adventure has led him to shape a company in which, today, the workshop team, his wife -who assumes the interior design-, his mother -who is in charge of the chairs-, his sister -architecture captain- and a good friend, who directs and executes the reforms, participate.
'I try not to be a boss but to be a leader, sharing a very good energy, aware that it's all a learning experience for me'.
The family patina of the company is no coincidence. I knew I wanted to have good people, people I could trust,' he says, while reflecting on his role, now that he has switched from production to project management: 'I try not to be a boss but to be a leader, sharing a very good energy, aware that it's a learning experience for me.
The learning, in fact, has been multiple and obligatory. Not only because of the firm's growth, but also because of the market. In the end, sustainability -which is an intrinsic value of the brand- has ended up being a debate -constructive, of course-. The fact is that 80% of the wood used in the workshop to make the furniture comes from reused beams, but the other 80% comes from American and French oak, ash and certified pine.
'It's as if I was born in the Mediterranean, but I'm from Argentina'.
This combination makes it possible to strike a balance between what Alfredo calls 'the romanticism of sustainability' and the production, design and profitability of the company. At the end of the day, 'you do get there. But staying there is the complicated part,' he confesses, while admitting that the biggest challenge he faces is 'profitability. To make production times profitable'.
Roots' trajectory is marked by an evident evolution. What began as a project of a lover of handmade furniture has been expanding and changing location to settle in an old factory in Manacor that embraces the Mediterranean aesthetics - the sea, the tiles, the ceilings - as do his creations.
In fact, the Mediterranean style has a determining influence on his design, 'it's as if I was born in the Mediterranean, but I'm from Argentina', he says, while he claims, somehow, that those of us born on the island should not lose sight of the beauty and authenticity of what surrounds us because we have it so close at hand and we are so accustomed to it.
It is impossible not to listen to someone who makes honesty a vital principle of his work ('you can make mistakes, the important thing is to show your face', he says) while he looks to the short and long term future with enthusiasm.
In the coming months, the idea is to open a store in Madrid and maintain the showroom of custom-made furniture in Mallorca. In a few decades, a dream: that his two sons will join the project and contribute new ideas. Fresh sage from a second generation that will continue to make the spaces we inhabit beautiful places with a material as noble as wood.
