La dolce vita! The story of Paolo Della Casa is one of those tales that can happen only in America. Arriving from Italy a scant six years ago, knowing hardly a word of English, Della Casa is now the No. 1 supplier of kitchens to luxury condo high-rises in South Florida. What a country! - Cover Story

South Florida CEO, August, 2003 by Johanna Marmon

Pop quiz: what do the following high-rises--Ocean II, Continuum, Gables Club II, Murano Grande, Setai, Acqualina, Neo Lofts, Las Olas Beach Club, Carbonnell, Quantum, Trump Palace, Sayan, Carillon, Icon and The Atrium--have in common? You could answer: expensive condominium units. Another answer would be: custom-designed kitchens installed, or contracted to be installed, by a Miramarbased company called Dellacasa, LLC.

While the real estate headlines have gone to the high-profile developers who are transforming the South Florida skyline, Dellacasa has quietly bagged a lucrative corner of the market. And the company has done it virtually overnight.

How this came to pass is due to several factors, including the current design rage for anything Italian. But in the end it comes down to the company's namesake CEO, the frenetic, gesticulating bundle of energy that is Paolo Della Casa. Just think of Italian actor Roberto Benigni when he won the Oscar several years ago for "Life Is Beautiful," climbing over the seats to tell the audience that he "wanted to make love" to all of them.

Paolo Della Casa, of course, would never use such words. But the energy, and the effusive belief that anything is possible in America, is clearly the same. "Every morning that I wake up, I thank God that I am here in the United States in this business," he says. "Only in America could this happen."

Della Casa's American odyssey began in Miami, where he landed five years ago in search of opportunity. He was in the furniture business in Italy, and was looking abroad to market Italian-made goods. Within a year or so he fixated on the market for kitchens in the flurry of luxury condominiums beginning to rise in the area. At the time, the South Florida kitchen market was dominated by German juggernaut Poggenpohl. But, as Della Casa notes, "Everybody recognizes Italy as the best place for design."

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So Della Casa pitched Tom Daly, project manager for The Related Group of Florida, which was just beginning to unleash the torrent of high-rises that have made it the top luxury condo developer in the state. Daly was wrapping up Ocean I, which had used Poggenpohl to supply its kitchens. Della Casa's proposal was a competitive notch higher: he could custom-build any sort of kitchen for Related, freeing the developer from the limited catalogue of pre-designed kitchens from Poggenpohl. He told Daly the manufacturers he worked with in Italy would build to his specifications.

"When he came in to meet with me on Ocean II he hardly spoke any English," says Daly, who's worked with Della Casa on Ocean II, Ocean III and Murano Grande. "I go a lot on how I feel when I meet people, and I thought he was trustworthy, and in addition to trusting him initially we did the proper background and we found the company was capable." Not only did Daly check out Della Casa's background, he flew to Italy with him to check out the suppliers. The result: Daly signed him to provide the 253 walnut (or birch, depending on what the buyer wanted) kitchens in Ocean II. While that condo wasn't the first one in South Florida that the Italian entrepreneur worked on--his first attempt, at the Solimar condo-minium, was a "disaster" due to the death of the developer and the firing of the general contractor--Daly nonetheless gave him the start that launched his custom-kitchen company.

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Della Casa's wife, attorney Sally Sawh, who married him just eight months after meeting him when he first arrived in Miami, says it had a lot to do with his ability to connect with people immediately upon meeting them. "When he landed that contract, he came home afterward and I asked him how he had done it," she says. "He told me, 'We looked in each other's eyes and shook each other's hands and gave each other our word, and that's how the deal was done.'"

Daly did one other thing for Della Casa: he introduced him to Tim Lillis, the top executive for Poggenpohl in South Florida. After a courtship that lasted more than a year, Lillis became Della Casa's partner in January of 2002. The relationship has clearly paid off: Together, they ransacked Poggenpohl's local dominance, posting more than $30 million in revenue last year.

Paolo Della Casa and Tim Lillis are standing together in the doorway of a sprawling penthouse in Ocean III, a soaring luxury condominium tower on the water in Sunny Isles Beach. The two are waiting for the elevator to take them back down to the just-completed condo's lobby. They're chatting idly about how the installation process is going for the building's 215 kitchens. About 90 percent of them--done in either oak, pear, maple or cherry--have already been put in by Dellacasa's team of 30 installers. They meticulously attach panels of polished wood to appliances, carefully position frosted-glass shelving inside the custom cabinetry and affix stainless knobs to drawers that slide open as if on air.

Someone asks Della Casa how many shipping containers of kitchen components the company brought through the Port of Miami from Italy last year. He cocks his head to one side, places his hands on his hips and thinks for a moment, brow furrowed. "Oh, I would say we brought in close to 400 containers," he says in his heady Italian accent. Lillis cuffs him lightly on the arm. "What, what?" Della Casa says, gesturing with his hands and flashing his always-ready smile. "We brought in exactly 320 containers," Lillis says, admonishing him with his own grin.