Date : 24/5/2006

News Release
Natcha Techaruvichit
Parichat Suntararak
MIM-19

On the night of March 28, 2006, half of us, MIM 19, gathered at the airport and were ready to take off for our Italy business trip, we all knew that our great adventure has begun. This was the first trip to Europe for some and the first trip to Italy for most. Everybody looked excited because this is not like a normal tour to Italy but it might be our only chance to visit famous businesses such as Gucci, Hines, Banca IMI and Gancia Winery. Over ten hours after taking off at Don Muang Airport and made a transit at Vienna, we finally arrived at our first destination, Milan.

We spent our first day in Milan visiting the city and its landmarks. The Duomo is very beautiful, the galleria and the fort are impressive, the city itself is amazing and of course the fashion at Milan is stunning. The first impression of us about Milan was Wow!! What a fashion city. They proved to be one of the best cities of style. While we were wondering around the city, we thought that we were part of the FASHION SHOW. People there dressed up like they were out from the catalogue. Not only that, shops are also decorated and displayed nicely and attractively. Everywhere we passed by, we were amazed with their displays. However, the most impressive thing to some of us in Milan is ice cream! Well, admit it, some of us had ice cream everyday while in Italy, even though the weather when we visited Milan was around 14-17 degrees celsius. How can you miss it??

Well, that was enough for fun, time to get serious. We started our business visit at Hines, a privately owned, international real estate firm that has provided the highest level of quality, service and value to its clients and investors for nearly 50 years with a presence in more than 85 cities around the globe. We had an opportunity to hear top management and marketing manager and the most important piece of information we heard at Hines is “social marketing”. When constructing their properties, Hines does not only have to market for selling, they also have to deal with people in community especially in cities with long years of history like cities in Europe. They had to ensure that they communicated to community appropriately to avoid any controversy.

We then moved on to visit Banca IMI, an investment banking subsidiary of the Sanpaolo IMI Group, one of the principal Italian financial groups, with a strong presence in equity and bond placement, specialised financial operations and securities’ trading.











We ended our visit in Milan in style at the world famous Gancia Winery, the first ever to produce sparkling wine and whose historic cellars known as “underground cathedrals” stretch under the town. Here, we had an opportunity to sip one of the finest wines, learn about wine making and how to market them.

Time to say good-bye to Milan; we headed south to the town of Pisa and visited the Leaning Tower. Wow, here modeling talents and posing creativities of our MIM boys and girls had been acknowledged. In the middle of thousands of people, our boys and girls managed to create interesting posing gestures and exercised them without any hesitation.

Headed south again we finally reached Florence and visited the duplication of David statue. After lots of photo-takings, we were taken to one of the finest local restaurants in Florence for local dinner, the food was excellent and came in a big plate, the wine was good and history was created. Started at this restaurant, MIM 19 has created one of its urban legends “Bird the carpet”.

Our business visits ended at Gucci in Florence. Mr. Dante Ferrari took us to visit one of the most famous brand production lines. We expressed our gratitude to Gucci for their kindness. Mr. Ferrari was so kind to spare his time and explain in so many details of the raw materials and hand-made techniques used to produce Gucci products. We left Gucci with full of contentment.

As someone said there is no party that is never end and our business trip has come to a final day. Some of us left the group at Florence and continued their adventure. The rest of us were driven to Rome to catch a flight to Vienna. Some of us again left at Vienna to explore the rest of Europe. What a trip! Even though, our Europe business trip has ended, we knew that this great adventure with the MIM 19 pals will last forever in our memories. Thank you MIM for organizing such a great educational trip. We are so gratified.