Fiat 500 Touring Club ExpatWomen's Interview with Sophie
ExpatWomen:Sophie, let’s start at the beginning… what is the 500 Touring Club, where is it and when did you start it?
Sophie: 500 Touring Club runs a fleet of vintage 1950’s and 60’s Fiat 500 cars. We offer quirky convoy tours round the sights of Florence and Tuscany, as well as private hire, wedding and corporate event services.
Our club house is a renovated 14th century stable in the centre of Florence, Italy.
We opened our ancient doors in March this year, so we are really new on the Florentine scene. The cars attract lots of attention as we trundle around, so we are already quite well known by the locals (who all like to stop by and tell me about the Fiat 500 they once owned).
ExpatWomen:How did you come up with the idea?
Sophie: I had the idea back in November 2006. I was on a flight back to London from a short weekend trip over to the Alps for a friend’s wedding. I read a magazine article about Chauffeur-driven 2CV car trips in Paris, who in turn were similar to Trabant car tours in Berlin… and I thought immediately that I could do something similar in Florence with Fiat 500’s. Simple, not reinventing the wheel.
My partner and I were talking about settling down, getting married and having children… and I was thinking… oh… oh… that means I won’t be working, I’ll have to climb the career ladder again… what will I do… oh... oh... (I was in TV production at the time, and it is not the easiest of businesses to get back into once you have a Family. The travelling I was doing was just not compatible with kids).
So I had my antenna up, looking for something that I could set up, hopefully make a success of, and then enjoy at arms-length while I start a family.
The Fiat 500 idea seemed to fit. I have only ever owned Fiat 500’s. My first car, (bought when I was 28) was a cappuccino Fiat 500, from 1967 (Topsy….see attached, lovingly looked after, now in London) I bought her on the Tuscany coast when I was living down there working in the fashion trend-forecasting industry. When I moved back to the UK, I couldn’t bring myself to leave Topsy behind….so she came to London too.
ExpatWomen:How long after that did it take you to act on the idea?
Sophie: My first actions were in Jan 2007, so just a month after that fateful trip to the Alps.
My partner Alex was really supportive. He encouraged me to look into the idea and has backed me all the way. New Year 2008, we went to Naples to enjoy the mayhem that only the Napolitanos know how to create, we checked out the local papers to see what the Southern Italians were selling their vintage cars for. Then we came up here to Florence to scout around some premises and see what the prices were like. In the end it was the first place we saw that became our Club House!
ExpatWomen:As an expat (from Britain), how easy was it for you to set your business up in Italy? What did it involve?
Sophie: I already spoke Italian, I had lived and worked in Italy before, and more specifically knew Florence very well, so I had an idea of what I was in for. Nothing could have prepared me for the journey though, culturally and economically Italy is not easy to invest in. The hurdles are many and very high, there is no clarity of process or procedure, but there is certainly lots of paperwork and waiting.
I started by working part-time in the UK and using my spare time to research and put together the business plan. Then of course there were the trips out to Italy to set up the business, buy the cars, renovate them, find the club house, renovate that….etc etc. The hardest part was getting started, finding a team of people that I trusted to help me with the officialdom.
Advice that you can trust in Italy is hard to come by. I found that depending on who I asked in the designated office of any particular piece of red tape, I would get a different response as to how to proceed. It was terribly frustrating. On a couple of occasions I admit to loosing-it a little (there are only so many queues I am willing to stand in for no apparent reason).
I make it sound grim (and that is not to say I don’t love it here) but the reality of setting up a business was not pretty, there were many moments that I asked myself what on earth I thought I was doing.
ExpatWomen:How has the business concept been going – in terms of its ability to attract customers – and the feedback of your customers to date?
Sophie: I am delighted with the progress so far. We are far from being on the tourist map, there is a long way to go and getting in the guides may take a couple of years (as they don’t publish very often),however, intrepid explorers are finding us!
The response has been phenomenal. I overheard one lady who had just completed the tour with her friend, talking randomly to a passing tourist, telling them to come and do a tour because it “is the best thing I have EVER done!”
Those moments are priceless, and really give me hope to stick out these early times when people don’t know we exist.
The more corporate side is also really responding well. This is a quote from a lady in London, who I am helping set up a whole weekend of activities for her small team of 12 branding creatives.
"My goodness you are quite brilliant! Thank you, thank you, thank you – it’s just wonderful what you have done. I really hope you can market this sort of thing. I will offer any recommendation for your services that I can".
So, yes, I am delighted as you can imagine. I don’t think I have generated such a positive response to my efforts since I brought finger paintings home to my mum from play group.
Many are the years I have worked very hard for the success of other people’s businesses. To get feedback like this on my own project is job satisfaction in the extreme! It makes the hard work really feel worth it. It was a really long journey to get here and my partner and I put everything on the line.
When we did our very first trial tour (it was a friend’s birthday, and I took her and all her friends from Naples on the first ever 500 Touring Club convoy), they all gave me a huge round of applause when we got back to the club house….even now it brings a huge lump to my throat. I was quite emotionally exhausted after 12 months of generating everything.
ExpatWomen:To any expat woman thinking of setting up a business abroad, what would be your five top pieces of advice?
Sophie:
Get your support network set up, but don’t expect too much. Ultimately you need to be able to carry the whole thing yourself; people will encourage you and be positive, but they may not be able to actually help you as much as you think (they will have their own businesses, and lives to work on). If you are prepared to make it happen yourself then you won’t feel let down by anyone. I learnt early on that my partner was best at supporting me emotionally and not to expect him to work for me!
Research. Research and do your financial model early and keep it up to date. This sounds a bit dull, but it is essential to understand the reality of your business finances. I built a financial model at the beginning, tracking all possible costs (that I could think of) with researched estimates, and adding new unforeseen costs as they came up. I was clear from the early stages what sort of output I would need to achieve if I was to make any money. Updating this with actual facts as we progressed was really useful. It serves to this day as my reality check, showing me in black and white what my targets are and where the business is heading.
Spend as little money as you can until you are sure about what you are doing. Don’t get your business cards done before you know your business is legal. Italy has its own very specific rules and laws. European law seems to be an addition rather than the common rule here….I had already had my logo and business cards designed and paid for, and then I found out that they were illegal here. Whilst my Italian advisors encouraged me to carry on regardless, my English nature prevailed and I redesigned the whole thing, not cheap.
Be self-expressed. I believe that the success of what I am doing here is related to my passion for it. Everything I do here comes very naturally to me, it is almost a culmination of my life experiences so far. I think that the integrity of the result (and the passion of the feedback it generates) is directly due to the fact that I am just being myself and enjoying it. I would encourage you to be yourself, very clearly and as honestly as you can. If your business idea is the kind of thing that people say “that is SO you” when you talk about it, then I think that is a good indicator that you will be a success at it (It may not make any money, but you will love it, and people will respond automatically to that vibe).
Enjoy it. Right now I work 7 days a week, but that is to be expected. However, my partner and I do make lots of time to enjoy our lives here in Florence. I consider it part of the business plan. It was not part of the plan to work myself to an early grave! We joined the rowing club and often get out on the water before work. We brought our mountain bikes out and often set off in the evenings in search of a hill top restaurant!
ExpatWomen:Thank you very much Sophie. We wish you phenomenal success with your very clever business idea!
