Pirelli was established in the year 1872 by Giovanni Battista Pirelli. It was initially formed as an LP firm named ‘G.B.Pirelli & C.’ in the city of Milan to manufacture elastic rubber products. Later, this firm was liquidated that led to the founding of Pirelli & C. The primary plant was founded in the year 1873 in Milano. Subsequently, the production for rubber band carriages was carried out in 1885 and velocipedes first tyre was also launched in 1894.
The car tyres UK production commenced in the year 1901, from where began the growth of the company in:
- Development of products and processes technologically
- Promoting racing
- Geographic expansion
The expansion was at its peak in the early 1900s by the opening of plants in England, Spain and Argentina. The first Grand Prix of the Automobile Club in 1907 had a car win with Pirelli tyres fittings. The company was listed at the Milan Stock Exchange in 1922. Around this time only, the company became the first Italian brand to have its share traded at the New York Stock Exchange. In the 1940s, the brand established itself in the part known as Latin America followed by Argentina in 1955. The first radial tyre named Cinturato was invented in 1949. It was tested and found to offer great performance, safety and resistance against wear.
In the 1960s and 1970s, the foundations of plants were laid in Greece, Turkey and Brazil. There was a leap in technology that was established by the upcoming of Cinturato P6, P7 and P8. The foremost motorcycle Pirelli radial tyre was innovated in the 1980s. The 1990s saw the engagement of financial and corporate reorganisation programs. Pirelli sold their terrestrial systems to Cisco in 2000 and later became a shareholder of Telecom Italia S.P.A. in 2007. Modular Integrated Robotised Systems were produced by the company in 2001 changing the tyre building process. The Continuous Compound Mixing technology room was laid in 2003 to conduct tests of innovative materials.
Pirelli transformed itself into purely a tyre company in the year 2010 and founded the Pirelli foundation to safeguard the heritage of Pirelli. The brand returned to Formula 1TM in the same year later on to become their exclusive supplier of tyres. Along with Formula 1TM, Pirelli also became the only tyre supplier of other championships that were under a single brand including Superbike World Championship, Ferrari Challenge and Lamborghini Super Trofeo. The target market in Russia was explored by the brand owners in the year 2011 alongside strengthening their base in Argentina as well. A joint venture was signed between Pirelli and Astra OtoParts for constructing a tyre production plant for motorcycles in Indonesia. The operations of this were planned to start in 2015. The company decided to sell its work of steel cord to Bekaert, a Belgian technology-oriented group.
Pirelli primarily focussed on achieving its objectives in the partnership agreement from 2015 to 2017. This was to enhance the dependency on its tyre business operating at an industrial level. Marco Polo eventually became the only shareholder of the brand and a reference shareholder of Pirelli Industrial, which was later named as Prometeon Tyre Group. The year 2016 welcomed the entry of Aeolus, which later bought Pirelli Tyres of 10% of the Industrial group capital that was paid up. Parallelly, Pirelli tyre also purchased 80% of the capital of Jiaozuo Aeolus Tyre, which was thereafter named as Pirelli Tyre Co. Ltd. The stock market saw the homecoming of Pirelli in 2017, which was followed by a re-organisation procedure which caused the breaking apart of the Industrial business to focus on the customer business.
The brand Pirelli is known for its culture, style, creativity, innovating abilities, performance, heritage, design sensibilities and excellence. Digitisation led to the brand market itself on all social media channels like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn, thereby spreading to a wider market on a real-time basis. The optimisation of the website has also garnered the company a significant amount of attention and loyalty from its customers.
