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From Osvaldo Fiorentini’s first entrepreneurial steps to a manufacturer serving professional cleaning markets around the world.
Osvaldo Fiorentini studied engineering and worked in industry before starting his cleaning-machine business in Italy.
Osvaldo Fiorentini was born on 20 January 1929 in Giugnola, in the Tuscan–Emilian Apennines. His mother was an elementary-school teacher and his father managed family land.
His early education took him to the Salesian College in Bologna and later to Florence. He then studied Chemical Engineering at the University of Bologna—an education that would shape the company’s engineering-led culture.
After the death of his mother in 1950, Osvaldo had to support his own studies. He began selling textbooks and then edited, printed and distributed university lecture notes himself.
The work earned him the nickname ‘little Hoepli’, after the Italian technical publisher. He completed his Chemical Engineering degree at the age of 26.
Osvaldo gained experience with major industrial businesses including Pirelli, Fiat and Esso Standard Oil. Travel in Switzerland, Austria and England helped him develop the languages needed for international business.
At Colgate-Palmolive he deepened his understanding of industrial processes and purchasing—knowledge that later supported his move into professional cleaning machinery.
In 1961, Osvaldo secured the exclusive Italian rights for Clarke Floor Machine Company of Muskegon, United States. With limited starting capital, he opened a driving school in Milan; the premises also became his first sales office.
The business first produced spare parts and then complete machines in Italy. Fiorentini soon began exporting, marking the transition from commercial representation to manufacturing.
When Clarke discontinued its scrubber-dryer programme, Fiorentini continued independently. It developed the ICM 21, ICM 24 and ICM 32 and began shipping them to customers in the United States and Canada.
At the 1980 ISSA exhibition in Chicago, Fiorentini presented the ICM 38—a compact ride-on scrubber-dryer that attracted international attention.
The machine became an important milestone in Fiorentini’s international profile and demonstrated how compact design could be combined with industrial cleaning performance.
The company expanded in Russia from 1985 and entered the Chinese market in 1989. Fiorentini’s company history records more than 15 operating centres in China.
Fiorentini continued building its range with the contribution of its technical team and its experience in professional cleaning markets. The company’s present identity—Italian product development, integrated production and international operation—grew from this history.
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