2 READERS' LETTERS Beautiful but bothersome A pleasant walk WALKING TO SELL 5400 KIMS A YEAR Walking to sell, but not always in sunshine. It was still not possible to wait for readers letters when preparing this issue, but we again had questions fired at us from all sides. Luigino Campanini has no driving licence but he does know how to handle a boat. He doesn't have a car as he almost always does his work on foot. He's lived in Venice all his life and has been selling Dreher and Heineken beer there for 23 years. You can take the gondola in Venice, but most of your customers can only be reached on foot. For the salesman there are lots of problems. Campanini doesn't let the difficulties get him down. He's a cheerful man, fond of a laughAs a true Venetian he's also an excellent singer, and singing is something he loves to do. He's also a sportsman. He used to play basketball. Now that he's in his mid-fifties he is on the committee of his club. He is married and has one daughter who has just graduated 'cum laude' in French. His 18-year-old son will be going to university this year. Tourists think Venice is a splendid place, and rightly so. But for the businessman all that water is a tremendous cost item and the source of a great deal of bother. "First of all", Campanini starts off, "there's the fact that boats are much slower than cars. You can hardly ever use big boats in this city either, as many of the canals are much too narrow. And then you're forced by law to have two people in charge of each boat. Once you've reached the landing stage with your beer, it has to be unloaded by hand and put on a sort of wheelbarrow. Then that has to be trundled to the customer. On your way there you're bound to come across at least one Luigino Campanini takes the ferry across the 'Canal Grande'. That saves him a long walk to the nearest bridge. bridge. Each bridge has steps up and steps back down, as the boats have to be able to pass underneath. The customers only have very small storerooms, because there's not much space in this water-filled city. The distributors have only got limited space as wellOur biggest distributor has 300 square metres of storage space. The salesman spends a great deal of time making arrangements for the deliveries. If a customer has run out of beer, he'll soon be inclined to choose another brand if you can't help him out q uickly enoughThe stocks are usually stored in cellars, and those tend to get flooded under in this city. Yet another reason for the customer to order as little as possible." "How pleasant to be able just to walk all the time, and how healthy it must be" is what we thought. Healthy it certainly is, but it's not so pleasant. Campanini soon shattered our illusions: "The streets are flat, of coursebut it's the bridges that get you There are 465 of them and you have to climb up and down them time and again." With all those problems it's not surprising that the customers can be described as rather gloomy businessmen. But Campanini has got used to that and has a big store of jokes and cheerful anecdotes that he can tell to chase away those gloomy moods. And his constant good humour undoubtedly helps as well. He sees the human aspects of his job as extremely important. "The links with your customers carry a great deal of weight. You must always keep your promises, they have to be able to rely on you, and you have to assume that the customer who is least friendly is the one who is most in need of a friendly word", says Campanini decidedly. A man's wife is usually the best j udge of his character. And, as Mrs. Campanini always says to her husband: "You wouldn't be able to live without people all around you." Having spent a day trekking round the city with him during his work, we're convinced of that. Every Venetian bridge has steps up and steps back down. Is there a god of beer? No, however strange it may sound. But there is a character known as Gambrinus or Cambrinus. He has sort of taken on the role of beer-god a little. The name is probably a corruption of Jean Primus (i.e. Jan, or John, the First), who must have been a great lover of beer. This Jan seems to have ruled as a Count in the Southern Netherlands long ago. Some people claim that he was the inventor of beer, but that's nonsense. Did people in the olden days think that ghosts had a big influence on the quality of beer? Yes, and that wasn't so very long ago either. Even in the last century there were still a great many home- brewers who got up to the weirdest tricks to drive away the ghosts or to appease the evil spirits. Luigino Campanini, our man in Venice.

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Heineken International Magazine | 1984 | | pagina 2