Antonio Percassi and the Atalanta miracle

The Bergamo team will play the Champions League next year, the third place in the standings and the best attack of the Serie A despite the 14th mount engages elevate the Percassi galaxy to an absolute model of entrepreneurial management, built thanks to the market, to the game, to communication and to the training sports center of Zingonia.
Before becoming the president, Antonio Percassi was an Atalanta defender, those massive and present, typical of Italian football around the 70s. After only 7 years between Serie A and B decided to change vocation, investing in real estate and in cosmetics, returning decisively in 2010 to defend Atalanta, guaranteeing unusual stability and solidity for a provincial club.

That of Percassi is a perfect operation of territorial marketing, which exploits a strong bond on the part of the city with the team, built also through traditions such as that, carried out for over 10 years, to send every child born in the hospitals of Bergamo a team's jersey, the one with La Dea has always been a bond of belonging.

Many Italian clubs struggle to find safety and credible buyers, the guarantee of Percassi is called Odissea Srl, a holding company 100% controlled by the entrepreneur class '53 and his sons. The company does not only operate in the world of football but also in the real estate, food and cosmetics sectors, with activities that in the last decade have seen growth and expansion in distribution all over the world.
After finishing his football career in 1978, with two appearances at Cesena, Percassi decided to devote himself to entrepreneurial activity, favored by the meeting with Luciano Benetton, who allowed him to open the first stores of the Venetian brand in Bergamo.

Continued its investments in the real estate field, a further turning point for Percassi took place in 1997 when it founded its own cosmetic brand Kiko, the company's main activity, with over 1100 sales outlets in 20 countries. In 2001 the entrepreneur opens the first Zara stores in Italy, after an agreement with the Inditex group president Amancio Ortega, who will be followed by other deals for the management and development of first-tier brand sales networks. Ralph Lauren, Gucci, Levi's, Nike, Swatch, Vergelio, Victoria Secret's and Billionaire Italian Couture - in partnership with Briatore first and then Philippe Plein - are some of the clothing brands that in 2017 made 100 out of the 360 million of net worth, with revenues growing at 805 million.
In 2014, the relationship between the president and Nike had brought the swoosh on the Atalanta uniforms for three seasons, thanks to the close ties between Odissea Holding and the Beaverton brand. Percassi is, in fact, is a reference point in Italy since 2002, when it opened 18 Nike-branded stores, including the first mono-brand in Corso Buenos Aires in Milan, Nike Lab and the 300-square-meter store in Oriocenter.
The redevelopment activities in recent years have also involved the former Crespi d'Adda cotton mill, a UNESCO heritage site since 1995 and since 2016 the headquarters of the company's tertiary activities.

Percassi Cosmetics then expanded with Mandina Womo and Bullfrog while in recent years large investments have been made by the family in the Food & Beverage section, which reached its highest level in 2018 when the first store in Italy of the American chain Starbucks Coffee was opened in Milan. To continue to fly as high as possible, in 2016 Percassi also bought 3.9% of Alitalia.
In 2014, Impresa Percassi was awarded the contract to renovate the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, a cleaning and restoration project commissioned by Prada and Versace for an amount of approximately 3 million euros. To guarantee the turnout the company has devised an innovative ad hoc system: the creation of a special mobile scaffolding on rails, which led the works to be completed for the inauguration of Expo 2015.

The financial year ended December 31, 2018 recorded the third balance sheet in consecutive profit for Atalanta, thanks to a philosophy that aims to reconcile sports results with the economic and financial balance. In 2018 the turnover was 155 million euros, of which 68 from the capital gains, one of the great secrets of Dea's success. Zingonia is known as one of the most prosperous and programmatic youth sectors of Italian football, also thanks to the work carried out for years by Mino Favini, who died just before being able to see the company of Gomez and Ilicic and Zapata. The Atalanta season is a prize for courage, not only demonstrated through a vertical game and projected to attack, but also to the ability to know how to give up without getting rid of the assaults of the big clubs, relaunching young people of the highest level every year. The capital gains of Gagliardini, Conti, Bastoni, Caldara and Cristante, as well as those in the past of Bonaventura, Baselli or Montolivo have made it possible to heal the budgets up to the construction of a new stadium, which began at the end of this season and which should end for the start of the next championship.

This summer in Bergamo they will have to defend themselves from the attacks for Castagne and Ilicic, dinners at Naples, Zapata (23 goals this year) as well as Gian Piero Gasperini.

At the end of the match against Sassuolo, Antonio Percassi asked the coach to stay next year, confirming how Gasp is doubly manager of his club, in the sense of the company and sports of the term. Management, valorization, and capital gains are inevitably the merit of the coach and therefore one of the businessmen of Odissea Holding Srl.