Please, don’t ask her about Santa Claus… Forbes
di Roberto Bonzio
Please, don’t ask her about Santa Claus…
It was still a warm Autumn afternoon when I met Luisa Trojanis in Milan. Quite warmer than the place where she is used to live and work as tourism entrepreneur: Swedish Lapland.
Luisa comes from charming Val d’Orcia in Tuscany, Land of Dreams for so many tourists. Too easy to enjoy those hills, if you were born there, with a special fire inside: challenge. So Luisa experienced shortly the hard life of Italian researcher, before opting for tourism. Still too small, the reception of an hotel. She wanted to experiment extreme environments. That is why she went to Swedish Lapland, starting her own business as a tourism entrepreneur, with Redfox Adventure, small independent company based in Tanndalen, “a traditional town in the wilderness of northern Sweden. Here there is a wilderness with plenty of high peaks, with untouched valleys and large lake systems. In this landscape you can travel for days without seeing another soul….”.
The beginning has been very hard, she remembers. For the cold, that can reach minus 40 degrees Celsius. For business: catching tourists from a far northern village, with just 22 people…
The web has been the winning card for this business. More: the social network. In her Facebook pages, Luisa built a strong personal profile, with tons of pictures. Wonderful landscapes, short and tasty notes and a “Web Star”: her dog Ginger, a Siberian husky.
So Luisa became quite popular in Italy, had many interviews with magazines, newspapers, tv. Even though stereotypes she hates are always behind the corner, like: “Lapland is Finland”, while she lives in Sweden.
And… what about Santa Claus? Don’t ask Luisa, her Lapland is really far from stereotypes, a place of mind. That’s the reason why Out Of The Box introduces her so close to Christmas. Just a joke to her… Yet, her innovative entrepreneurial spirit, moving from the warm Tuscany to the Far Cold North, would be today as precious as a Santa Claus present for her country, fighting to come out from a deep crisis, not just financial, cultural too. Needing new courageous models to enterprise. Ready to the challenge: leaving warm and sun, using Italian creativity in difficult environments…
