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Bear Graves: I'm here with Luca di Piazza, the promoter extraordinaire of Neatpipes/Italianpipemakers, the owner of Luciano Pipes, as well as the representative for Cavicchi, Radice, Don Carlos, Le Nuvole, Posella, Davide Iafisco, and Tonino Jacono, as well as one of the coolest guys I have had the pleasure of meeting. It's been a while, Luca, how are you?
Luca di Piazza: I have been busy. Allow me a slight correction; during normal times I am busy. With a total restatement of Luciano pipes underway, I am now crazy-busy; I wish I could put in a request for 26 hour days. By the way, while I appreciate you saying so, if I'm one of the coolest guys you have had the pleasure of meeting, you might consider getting out more often.
Bear Graves: (laughing) Well, I'm always up for an all-expenses paid trip to Milan, in order to hang out with cool people. Maybe you could sponsor me as a guest worker, how do you say "panhandler" in Italian?
Luca: In the strictest sense of the word "accattone", but I can also think of several Italian bureaucratic titles which come pretty close, in my estimation.
Bear Graves: I'm definitely going to want to return to that subject later. There isn't much information about your background and history on English sites. Towards filling that glaring gap, would you mind if we started with some biographical questions?
Luca: Fire, when ready!
Bear Graves: When and where were you born?
Luca: I was born in the city I love, Milan, on New Year's Day in 1982. Though I have traveled around the world, visiting places throughout Europe, plus the USA, China, Japan, and Russia, and lived for a couple of years in Valencia, Spain, as well as a few months in Shanghai, my heart, my family, indeed, my very soul is in Milan. And, with every passing year, I love my city even more.
Bear Graves: Wow. After a passionate response like that, the only thing preventing me from hightailing it to Milan, is the possibility of being mistaken for a country hopping ISIS wannabe. What did you parents do for a living?
Luca: Though retiring 4 years ago, my father spent his whole life working for the Municipal Transportation Company of Milan: ATM. Many folks in San Francisco probably knows this acronym as some of their oldest and most loved of their street trolleys hail from his company. Since he retired at a young age, he started helping me with Neatpipes. He is one of the souls of Luciano's workshop. My mother, who will also be retiring shortly, has spent the past 20 years working with microfusion to create high-tech components for engines — the Boeing Turbine being an example. I promise you that she will start enjoying a very different kind of life in a few months.
Bear Graves: What fond memories of your childhood and early adulthood will always be with you?
Luca: Perhaps some might regard this as odd, but I'm not the best with long term visual recall. I can tell you that I had a very happy childhood, as well as many fond feelings of spending time with my grandmother, who took care of me from shortly after birth to secondary school at the age of 14. She taught me how beautiful is life, how family links are important and how people can receive a lot of love with just a smile. She's still part of my life and she is a great power for me. If the answer you were hoping for was something like "running barefoot through sun drenched fields of grass", I have always asserted that when I am very old, I will have nothing to share in the way of concrete memories because of the way I am wired. My memories from 25 years ago are no different.
Bear Graves: Personally, if you had said something like "running barefoot through sun drenched fields of grass", I would have found that much odder. It's been my observation that vivid, dream-like recollections are more the stuff of the Cinema than real life. In at least that matter, we are wired in a similar manner.
Luca: I share some wiring with Bear? Now, that's just plain scary. Just kidding.
Bear Graves: Hey, be nice, I was the one who said you were "cool" (laughs). Prior to becoming involved in the pipe industry, what types of jobs did you do?
Luca: There are jobs outside of the pipe industry?! Seriously?! NOW you tell me! (laughs) My very first job was related to pipes. I was studying architecture at that time, at the Politecnico in Milan, and I needed a job to get some money. In 1999, I put together and ran a website for Franco Bolognesi, an ecommerce site dedicated to retailing his personal collection of Dunhill and Castello pipes online. The Bolognesi website aside, my first briar job was for a retail store in Milan. I created and managed their online store for a couple of years. While enterprise was extremely popular and had enjoyed over seventy years in business, there just, understandably, came a time for the owners to retire, that would now place us in 2002.
Already in love with the pipe world., my main relationship with pipemakers at that time was with Franco Coppo 'Kino' of Castello and he gave me tremendous support to start my own business. In 2002, July 18th, Neatpipes.com opened, and my total inventory was a couple of dozen of nice Estate pipes. While Neatpipes.com took me in many different, interesting directions during the initial years, the tale is too long to be fully recounted here. What is important to note is that I started to represent Italian pipemakers throughout the world in 2008, Radice was my first client. That also represented my first step into the world of business-to-business, rather than retailing only. When Luciano was born in 2007, that became the third face of my enterprises.
Bear Graves: Moving not only in to representing, but creation of the actual briars with Luciano, kind of begs an obvious question: do you find yourself happiest when involved in the actual day-to-day creation of briars, or do you derive greater joy in getting out and talking about your pipes with retailers and collectors?
Luca: I really love ALL parts of my job! There are a lot of background steps, before getting to public: Sketching pipes and ideas, managing the Luciano workshop, visiting and discussing with the Italian carvers about new ideas. I love to travel and tremendously enjoy my relations with smokers and collectors, whether personally, online and emails. The only thing I really dislike, and I have no way of avoiding it, is paper-work in the office. With respect, US wholesalers and retailers have some bureaucracy to deal with, but most of you have little notion of what I insane hoops I have to jump through in order to appease the Italian "Bureacrazy!" I could tell you, but you wouldn't believe it.
Bear Graves: I understand that some very major, some might even say "revolutionary", changes are taking place at Luciano, could you help fill us in?
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Last fall I had the pleasure of visiting Neatpipes with my wife. Luca's passion for pipes was evident and he graciously showed us the pipes he had on hand and gave us a peek at the workshop where some Luciano Bamboo pipes were being finished (we were sworn to secrecy at the time). Luca really is a cool guy.