Anna Bussolotto & Giovanni Vedana – 2.8 Bringing Beauty into Focus

Translation of the Sole 24 Ore article about Anna and Giovanni.

 

The villa has been watching them for a long time.

It does not speak, but it listens.

The way country houses do when they understand they will not be just walls, but destiny.

Here, among the fields of Mirano, time seems to slow just enough to separate what truly matters from what is merely noise. And perhaps that is why Anna Bussolotto and Giovanni Vedana, wife and husband, decided that this would become the home of 2.8. Not an office. Not a warehouse. A house where ideas could breathe.

Before arriving here, however, there was a long road.

Anna and Giovanni meet at the end of the 1990s. An almost accidental encounter, as often happens with the stories that end up lasting. She comes from an interrupted path, from a university degree left unfinished, from a still-confused search for herself. He already has a clearer direction: the world of relationships, sales, design, Italian furniture. He knows how to read people, how to organize, build, hold the pieces together. And perhaps this is the first spark: Giovanni sees something in Anna that she herself has not yet brought into focus.

Photography has always been there for Anna. In her family, even before becoming a choice. Not a declared vocation, but a quiet possibility. It is Giovanni who pushes her to truly try. To follow her own path, without remaining in the shadow of a family tradition. Anna studies, works, learns. And then she begins. Weddings, ceremonies, reportage. So many. Hundreds. With a different gaze, even then: no poses, no forced constructions. Just life as it happens. It works. It works very well. Perhaps too well.

After years, that repetition begins to weigh on her. The photography that had set her free risks becoming a cage. Anna feels it in her body before her mind. She decides to stop, to change, to return to portraiture, to the studio, to a more intimate relationship with the image. Giovanni, meanwhile, continues his career as an agent in the design world. Twenty years of relationships, travel, companies, constant training. But he too, at a certain point, feels the same weariness. The sense of working to grow projects that are not truly his.

That is when they begin to work together. A photography studio, a production agency. It is not easy. Combining work and marriage never is. But they endure. They learn. They fall and get back up.

Then Quintale arrives. A dachshund. A dog who is not “just a dog,” but a life companion. Of travels. Of home. And it is Quintale who triggers something no business plan could have predicted. Looking for beautiful objects for him, Anna realizes that the pet world is stuck in an aesthetic that does not belong to her. Too ugly. Or too uncomfortable. Or both.

One day she buys a dog carrier. It is beautiful, yes. But heavy. Unusable. Impossible to wash. It does not work. And in that moment Anna thinks: it needs an Italian spark. Something that holds beauty and function together. Comfort for the dog and pleasure for the person who lives with it every day.

This is how the idea of 2.8 is born. A name that comes from photography. An aperture that brings what matters into focus and lets the rest fade away. A perfect metaphor for what they want to do: the dog’s well-being at the center, without forgetting the human who loves it. Objects meant to enter life, not to be hidden behind a door.

At the beginning everything is fragile. Attempts, sketches, abandonments. Then a restart. The first products. A bag, a bed. Unusual materials. An aesthetic that does not belong to the pet world. The first trade fairs, often out of context. Perplexed looks. But also the first confirmations.

A Milan-based partner arrives—visionary, essential. He brings method, courage, international ambition. He opens doors. Then, suddenly, he exits the scene for health reasons. Another shock. Another balance to be found.

And then Covid arrives. And with Covid, a question that concerns not only the company, but life itself: where do we want to be? The answer is this villa.

It is not a comfortable choice. It is not rational. But it is deeply coherent. Here, 2.8 stops being a “remote” project and becomes a single body. Here, control returns to Anna and Giovanni’s hands. Here, the warehouse, the style office, thought, and vision meet every day. The villa becomes home, workplace, relational space. A place where people can arrive, stay, and understand.

Today, 2.8 is a family brand. A project that speaks of lifestyle, not just dog products. Germany, France, the United States, Japan. Different markets, the same obsessive attention to detail. A growing online presence, carefully selected physical retail. Slow choices, often against the current. Conscious renunciations. Saying “no” to protect meaning.

In recent years, within this constantly shifting balance, their children have also entered the picture. Not as extras, but as real presences. Their daughter is already fully part of the company: she works, travels, represents 2.8 in complex and distant contexts, from the United States to Japan. She brings an international outlook to the project, a different sensitivity, and an attention to detail sharpened through engagement with cultures where precision is not an option, but a form of respect.

Their younger son, instead, is still at university. He studies economics and observes. But he does not remain on the sidelines. His first contributions—born of study and a more analytical eye—are already finding space in the company’s daily dialogue. Not as top-down solutions, but as the right questions, numbers lined up, scenarios that help better read what 2.8 can become.

Anna and Giovanni do not speak of generational transition as a milestone to be planned at the table. There is no rush, no rhetoric. Rather, there is the desire for 2.8 to grow enough to become, one day, a solid house to hand over. A company that has found its shape, its pace, its coherence. Because only then, perhaps, will it truly be able to keep walking even without them at center stage.

The villa continues to listen to them.

It knows that not everything is resolved. That the future is not written. But it also knows that today, within these rooms, there are not just two founders working on the present of a brand. There is a couple trying, day after day, to build something that can last longer than they will. And perhaps this, in the end, is the deepest meaning of 2.8: to bring what matters now into focus, without losing sight of what is yet to come.

 

#ToBeContinued
Andrea Bettini