We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Rodolfo Tanara a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Hi Rodolfo, thanks for joining us today. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When i started my business it was just me, since the partner i used to have, decided to step back from taking the risk of starting a company based on un-perfectioned skills and empiric trials and errors. I don’t blame him for this, but it was his loss. Soon my fianceè stepped up to help me on an occasional basis at first, and more and more regularly then.
Anyway it was just me on the entire manufacturing process, while she concentrated herself on the design, customer care, and finance matters.
We had a small workshop of 23 sqm divided equally in two rooms inside an ancient convent restructured by the municipality of Firenze and assinged to a foundation to preserve it and to create several workshop to rent to associations, artesans, artists, etc.
So i managed to obtain one of those workshops for rent, and subsequently they decided to assign me one at the first floor, instead of ground floor, as i requested.
After the first year, through common friends we met Simone, a guy who wanted to become a smith, but with a past life spent in literature and having developed mostly precision skills in his life, it was literally hard for him to adapt himself to a regular basis of grinding.
So he started occasionally to come to “develop” his skills and to help me more on the wooden matter of the handles and on the leatherworking process, in both of which he was much more versatile.
Half a year from that point, we decided to change our prospective and we moved to another place, doubling the space and consequencely the bills for rent and energy.
Nevertheless, we were growing up very fast, so Simone was called more frequently; i had several people asking to become apprentices but after the first month trial period most of them revealed themselves to be inadapt to this kind of work.
After another year and a half, we assumed Simone as an apprentice and we were running the production.
But the request for our swords was increasing constantly, and there was not enough money to implement the manufacturing process and make it scalable, so we decided to assume more apprentices; today in 2023 there are 3 apprentices, 1 employee part time, and one familiar coworker; the result is that we don’t have enough income to invest in scalability.
Should i restart today, i would invest as much as possible on one single MVP and make it scalable all way through.
After that, product customization would be the imperative. Maximize the productivity only on products worth the effort, and for customers willing to accept that kind of deal and bill.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Malleus Martialis is a sword making company. We provide swords for Hema sports, historical re-enactment and even museum replicas.
In any case we only produce blunt weapons, never sharp nor pointy.
We offer services of standard production, customization, repair, consulence on design, research.
Our customer care, our empathy for the client’s needs, and the commitment to the client’s satisfaction are the features that make us one of the most reliable sword making artesanal companies in the world.

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

i’d say that everything came by precedent failures; i was studying medicine at the university, and my fianceè was studying to become a professional opera singer. Both of us were frustrated by not accomplishing our efforts.
Both of us shifted to something we experienced for hobby in our past.
When we met, she was still in the academic world, but not fully satisfied.
I have quit my career to create a small business, without having any experience of business matter. Nasty.
She helped me in the parts i couldn’t comply with.
I managed to make good and valuable objects. She managed to sell them and to make customers satisfied.
We are still on business.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

We made some poor choices on investments and that resulted in severe money losses hard to be absorbed, since the marginal profit due to excessive expenses have prevented us from invest on scalability of the processes. Nevertheless, we made personal efforts to fill the gaps and this resulted in a financial stressful situation, even due to a market stagnation.
We have understood the importance of scalability since this and we are directing most of our efforts to that direction.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.malleusmartialis.com
• Instagram: instagram.com/malleusmartialis
• Facebook: facebook.com/malleusmartialis