Emilio Gallo

Date of birth: 1870

Died: 1945

A textile industrialist, he was also an explorer and mountaineer, friend and expedition companion of Vittorio Sella to the Caucasus (1896). In his youth, like two other photographers of the Biellese area Luigi Borsetti and Antonio Tosso, he worked at the Bellia Knitwear factory in Pettinengo and at the Boglietti Knitwear factory in Biella. In 1902 he started a textile business in Biella in partnership with his uncle Giuseppe Squindo, former owner of a cast iron foundry in Ivrea. In 1909 the company already employed 200 workers and Emilio Gallo needed to find   new premises so he could extend and modernise his factory. He chose Chivasso, an important railway junction between Piedmont and Lombardy. Emilio Gallo designed the factory, the office buildings, the dormitories for the workers and a residential villa in the industrial zone of Chivasso. With the outbreak of war in 1914 Emilio had a profitable business providing military supplies and slowly began to get involved with local society, doing many charitable works. In 1918 his uncle Giuseppe Squindo left the partnership and Emilio’s brother Attilio joined. Between 1920 and 1930 the knitwear company expanded further: in 1926 the number of workers in Chivasso and Montanaro totalled 575, as well as 50 home workers and 50 employees/workers, making 675 employees altogether Attilio died in 1939 followed by Emilio Gallo in 1945. Attillio’s three sons, Achille, Emilio and Aldo, carried on the business and today the management of the company is in the hands of Emilio’s two sons, Fabrizio and Damiano. “Emilio Gallo S.p.A.” remained the company with the most employees in the Chivasso area until the advent of Lancia in the Sixties.