Susanna Minotti, head of the interior department in Minotti, was recently in Cyprus to open a new Minotti Limassol Showroom in the Trilogy Limassol coast.
With regard to Minotti's identity as a family business, she was accompanied by her uncle, co-CEO Renato Minotti, and her cousin Alessio Minotti, research and development manager. Here she reveals the argumentation and design concept behind the new business of the luxury brand and talks about the challenges and advantages of work in a family business with a long history.
Minotti has a long history and is still a family business that they joined in 2013. What are some of the advantages and challenges of working with the family?
My brother, our cousins and I belong to the third generation of the company and every day I have the opportunity to talk to my father and uncle, who continues to lead Minotti as co-CEOs. Each of us has a well -defined role based on our own skills and skills, but what connects us is a common vision that goes beyond the family ties. The challenges that we face differ greatly from those with whom my grandfather had to do when he founded the company – at a complex historical moment when everything had to be invented. Today our task is twice: on the one hand to preserve what was built with such determination and on the other hand interpreted the present with clarity and incorporates the brand into the future without distorting its identity. On this trip, the value of the people who work next to us makes the difference. At Minotti we have surrounded ourselves with employees and partners over time who are capable, passionately and to our vision. It is a collective work from listening, mutual respect and trust. This may be the real strength of a family business: to know that continuity also comes through the people who decide to share our trip.
How do you want to see that the company's inheritance will continue by future generations?
I believe that the real task of a company like ours is to further interpret the times when we live with intelligence and sensitivity, just like in the past. Today it is more important than ever to be able to grasp cultural, social and technological changes and to transform them into design visions that speak for the present and the future. Our goal is not only to produce furniture, but to create atmospheres: environments that convey a certain lifestyle through a conscious stratification of languages, materials and emotions. In this process, the selection of the designers is of crucial importance. We choose them very carefully and look for interlocutors who offer the brand value creation and can contribute to a cultivated, developed and contemporary vision of life. As a representative of the third generation of the company, I feel the responsibility to maintain the values that define our identity – tradition, quality, aesthetic sustainability – but also lead the company to constant evolution, so that our heir is not only preserved, but continuously reinterpreted with coherence and a pioneering spirit.
How would you, as head of the interior design department at Minotti, describe the aesthetics of the brand and how it is expected to develop in the future?
The Minotti aesthetics is based on a profound dialogue between the identity of the collection and the spatial ecosystem in which it fits. Our daily challenge is to interpret and translate the needs of the project harmoniously and to translate the strength of the brand of the brand with the cultural and ecological specificities of the places where our products live. Each element – from the design details to the selection of materials, from the chromatic choice to the composition of rooms – is equipped as part of a coherent narrative, in which architecture and interior design dialogue dialogue dialogue. Our work is not limited to the creation of objects, but extends to the construction of atmospheres and contexts that reinforce the experience of contemporary life and respect the soberness and elegance that defines Minotti. For me, this constant tension between continuity and innovation is an inexhaustible source of inspiration, fertile reason to promote new visions that can protect both the essence of the brand and project into the future.
In their experience, what are some of the most important things that today's Minotti customers demand in relation to the type of products and general aesthetics?
Today's customer base is extremely informed, demanding and always looking for exclusivity. Against this background, we strive to guarantee the quality of our products and to provide answers and solutions in real time. On the one hand, we offer versatile collections that enable the creation of almost tailor -made configurations that can adapt to very different stylistic and functional requirements. On the other hand, we have developed a business agility with which we can also react to the most specific or most complex inquiries. Minotti Furnure is characterized by a wide selection of versions and configurations that meet the exact customer request. The width and flexibility of our offer are among our license plates: Our Roger system collections, for example, contain up to 600 elements, which demonstrates our ability to adapt every project with great precision and aesthetic consistency.
What do you think for some of the most exciting current trends in contemporary luxury lifestyle and decoration?
Nowadays it is becoming increasingly difficult to make predictions because the shape world is constantly evolving, as well as lifestyles, trends and technologies. For us, it is of fundamental importance to listen to the market, to adapt our code to its emerging trends, to respect the cultural heritage and the development of contemporary lifestyle. But we don't just follow changes: we work in advance. We are constantly looking for weak signals that announce new sensitivity, new lifestyle and new styles. Our goal is always to be one step ahead and offer collections that can become dialogue with the present, but can also open up new opportunities for the future. Our trademark remains excellent performance, creativity and authenticity of the design: values that are rooted in our history that reinterpret the past to form something new that is calming but also surprising.
What can visitors of the new Minotti Showroom expect in Limassol?
The new Minotti Limassol Showroom in the legendary TRILOGIE LMASSOL -SEAE COMPLUS, which is a landmark for the city and is recognized as an elegant place that is designed as at home that combines the relaxed atmosphere of the coast with the living energy of the city center. Thanks to its large windows, the rooms are bathed in natural light, which improves the timeless furniture from Minotti. The project fully curated by Minotti Studio, which represents the creative department of the brand, is characterized by a warm color palette, refined materials and various settings that cause both indoor and outdoor areas. The design concept behind the flagship Minotti Limassol Store was created from the local context, which corresponds to one of the main principles of all of our projects. Our goal is always to create authentic design goals that express the DNA of the brand from its best side and at the same time with the cultural and architectural identity of the place dialogue.
Minotti has had a strong relationship with his Cyprus partners for many years. Can you prove more about the decision to further expand the brand in Cyprus?
The solid and durable cooperation with our partner C. Askotis Retail has been further strengthened since 2010 with the opening of Minotti Limassol, our second shop in Cyprus. This important step was made possible thanks to the extraordinary feedback from the first business and the strong bond, which Minotti has built up with the Cypriot market over time. Makis Askotis, our visionary and passionate partner, played a key role by investing in the value of the brand with foresight. With him, a close -meshed team has contributed to promoting Minotti's identity on the island authentically and consistently. This latest initiative consolidates the presence of the brand on the island and offers new development opportunities in a context that has always shown great passion and interest in Italian design.
What are some of the main decoration errors that make people, and/or current trends that you believe should be ignored?
Minottis DNA has her roots in aesthetic sobriety, timeless elegance, continuity in tradition and manual Savoir faire with a great attention to detail. Despite the succession of various trends, our core principles are the focus of our design. Among the most common mistakes I often see an excessive search for immediate effect or the temptation to follow striking trends without coherence with space or personal identity and to lose depth and authenticity. It is therefore important not to be demolished by short -lived fashions such as decorative excesses or materials for poor quality as innovative, but to prefer conscious design that combine aesthetics and functionality over time. Only in this way can the environment really tell the history of those who live in it and keep a discrete elegance and a sophisticated stylistic continuity.
(Photo by Tapo)
- This article was first published in the 2025 edition of the Cyprus Journal of WEATTH Management. Click here to display it. Click here to display the full edition