
The concepts of personalization, tailoring, bespoke, “made to measure” and custom are an integral part of PLH's vision, are intrinsic to it. In a certain way, they come before the project and the product, they serve to think of the electric control plate as a unicum each time, and this even when it refers to an existing collection. Enrico Corelli, CEO of the Milanese company, digs deep into this topic: “Customization is generally thought of as an attempt to respond as precisely as possible to the client’s needs and desires. And in fact that’s the case. But for PLH there’s more. There’s another side to the matter. Personalization concerns us too, regardless of the customer. An experimental, research-based customization: PLH is in this sense a true laboratory of ideas. Ideas that generally spring from within our sector of interest, but that often come from other fields, from technological but also cultural or artistic inputs that strike my imagination: a trade fair, an exhibition, a reading, a painting, a meeting, a conversation. Suggestions, ideas that call for other ideas. And everyone, in their own way, 'ask' to be transferred to the PLH world”.
This is no small thing, nor is it a given, it requires significant effort, an enormous expenditure of energy, and a continuous recourse to the so-called “Think different” of Jobian origin. “I think,” explains Enrico Corelli, “that this approach is based on my restless nature, my inextinguishable curiosity, the irrepressible desire to always discover new things, to insert them into a sort of mental network that connects them together, makes them interact with the acquired know-how, expands their meaning and, at the same time, prefigures possible applications.” This leads Corelli, his staff and the expert craftsmen who collaborate with him to experiment with new and innovative design and engineering paths and solutions that, at times, lead nowhere, but always enrich the knowledge of all the actors in the process”.
Corelli is clear and convincing on this point: “It is not something separate from the company's strategies. On the contrary, it is one of the driving forces. This completely experimental process, which also and above all operates by trial and error, inspired by what Galileo supported regarding the scientific method, it helps to acquire 'augmented' knowledge, an open mind, a flexibility of thought and design that provide further tools for customization. In fact, it allows us to offer the client unexpected points of view, to address his desires according to unconventional but effective perspectives. Between research, only apparently, for itself and research for the client, extraordinary synergies are generated. After all, regarding my way of seeing and feeling things, I confess that I cannot do without human contact, for me it is a must to go to the construction site to see first-hand the strengths and weaknesses of my products, to find a way to refine them, to understand and also suggest how to do better, how to simplify complexity without obliterating it, to find in the dialogue with the client and his architects stimuli to create novelties and push the concept of customization ever further forward”
This is how a very particular custom is born, consultative and not simply executive.. A sui generis approach, from a "consultant who gets his hands dirty when needed" that has proven to be successful especially when applied to a target that cares more about beauty than mere cost (which still maintains its importance…). Corelli continues: “It is a value that greatly contributes to forming our different identity”, unique, one might say, compared to companies in the sector. And it is a value shared by all those who work at PLH”.