Marco De Gasperi new brand manager of SCARPA

What’s your role in SCARPA?

My role in SCARPA will be that of brand manager for the Trail Running category. Among my duties there is the coordination of product research and development, the management of the SCARPA athletes team, and the important synergy with marketing for all the communication and event management.

From athlete to brand manager: what do you think could be the main advantages for a person with your kind of skills and knowledge around the world when becoming a brand manager? 

Having had international experience in this field as an athlete of a certain level, I think it has taught me some important things. First of all, that defeats serve to improve, and that to avoid them you have to train with perseverance and passion, without burning the stages. What can Trail enthusiasts look for in a product? The sporting trend in this rapidly expanding discipline has changed a lot in recent years, and I hope to bring a dynamic vision to SCARPA that can keep up with the changes. To be innovative but at the same time keep the key principles of the past that made a brand like SCARPA great.

Given your experience and know-how in trail running, what do you think is the most important feature of a trail runner’s equipment? Quality? The average lifespan of the product? The price? 

For a company like SCARPA, which has always made the quality and technicality of its products its winning weapon, pursuing this path for Trail Running will certainly be decisive. Whoever chooses a product to run along the trails, wants to feel comfortable and protected. Obviously the shoe must also be aesthetically beautiful, a peculiarity now very observed by buyers.

How did you feel when you joined an important team like the Asolo company?

I think it is quite impossible to express in words the feelings I felt when I received this proposal from the CEO of SCARPA, Dr. Diego Bolzonello. To think that so many years as a sportsman have served to be recognized as a valid person for such a coveted but responsible role, makes me think that my career has left its mark in this field, and I apologize if this also makes me a little proud. I knew the company for its fame in the mountain world, but I had never come into contact with it. Now I’m in it all and everything, with a team for the fantastic product, from which I owe and want to learn so much.

How important do you think it is for a company like SCARPA to enter international competitions like Skyrunner World Series?

SCARPA, I just said, has an undoubted tradition in the mountain world. Running combined with the most extreme version of the mountain is Skyrunning. Here our products can give their best, and therefore it is strategic to be a partner of such high level stages as those of the World Series circuit. We will be, if the nightmare in which the whole world has fallen will end, and will thus allow us to return to running freely this year. The Limone Extreme stage in Limone del Garda was our first choice. An iconic race, which for us has a great strategic value also thanks to the town of Garda, strongly oriented to a tourism of walking and running on the beautiful trails overlooking the lake. But it’s not over yet, I think it’s not right to concentrate our efforts in support of this world, the Trail and Ultra Trail is in great growth and even here we will enter to support the events with great enthusiasm.

You have been an athlete for many years and you have an important palmares. According to your experience as an athlete, how important do you think it is to have a continuous look at innovation in product and brand development? How much has changed in trail running products since you started running?

If I look back to the past, I’m talking about the early 2000s, it makes me smile when I think which equipment was used to run races like Monte Rosa, Kinabalu or Kima, just to mention the more technical ones… There weren’t enough sculpted treads, except for the “Fell Running” shoes in Britain for the grassy hills. Then the advent of a few daredevil brands that started to produce some prototypes that, at the beginning, were however discarded in favour of the more comfortable road racing models. But it was only a matter of time, by now the world was evolving and racing in nature was increasingly looking for its own identity. Since then, innovation has become the key to Volta in an industry that needs new technologies to tackle long distances and gradients tout court. I believe that having an eye on the environment is also fundamental nowadays. Research has made it possible to make use of materials that are biodegradable because they are derived from vegetables, and that maintain their characteristics of durability and reliability.

Is there any particular objective or novelty you would like to bring to the company and achieve?

I would simply like to bring a new vision. That of a boy who grew up with a great passion for this sport and who, with a lot of humility, wants to try to chart a path. The goals, even if ambitious, will remain personal for superstition. Like when I was preparing my World Cup, in silence, working hard.