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| VinCenzo International |
| div. VVGI Corporation |
| Founded: |
| 1988 |
| Home Office: |
| Chicago, Illinois |
| President and CEO: |
| Keith Armato |
| a.k.a. The Big Vincenz |
| Partner Factories: |
| Shenzhen, China |
| Osaka, Japan |
| Tokyo, Japan |
| Seoul, Korea |
| London, England |
| Barcelona, Spain |
| Paris, France |
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Keith Armato came to work at his father Philip's company in 1966, the Summer after his Freshman year of high school. He saw a company worried about its future. Their primary product would soon be obsolete. In the years leading up to 1966, as the company concentrated on expanding this product, they slowly lost their other less profitable customers to competitors. Working part-time for the next three years, Keith saw how a company could quickly go from good times to bad because of a lack of vision of the marketplace. Keith took two years off for college, and then joined the company full-time in 1970 while taking courses part-time to finish his education. Three years later, Keith found that customers he had brought to the company now accounted for 80% of their business. Once again the business was diversified, and included customers in several food related industries, as well as a new area that Keith had developed. This area was the use of decorative tins for the promotion of food products. In this new area he was soon providing tins to most of the major food companies in the country. He helped companies like Pillsbury, Carnation, Borden's, and Nestle develop promotional packaging for their products. |
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| In 1975, Philip Armato passed away, and Keith felt that the company could never be the same without his Father at the helm. He joined another family can company to work with his father's cousin, Dominic Armato. This was an entirely new challenge, as Dominic's company was making industrial cans. Over the next five years, Keith transformed the company into the premiere manufacturer of decorative tins. Unlike his father's company, where his efforts were limited to sales, Keith gained the experience in all areas of tin manufacturing including purchasing, machinery, tooling, printing, and the manufacturing processes. He took over the day to day operations of Dominic's company, and within five years he was responsible for increasing the sales of the company by 300% and developing the manufacturing capability to support this growth.
His knowledge of the decorative tin market in the United States now matched by his knowledge of tin manufacturing techniques, Keith was determined to solve a problem that had troubled him since his first days in the industry. With the cost of tooling and machinery so great, can companies could only offer a limited number of products. Even if a customer had a requirement that would justify the expense of tooling, often they would not commit to a purchase without first seeing a sample or testing the market. To do this, the tooling had to be manufactured, and it was simply too much of an investment to make without a firm order.
Keith spent two years traveling around the world, visiting can manufacturers and discussing this problem. He visited over 100 factories during this time, and the result of his travels is a system of manufacturing and marketing that has been a revolution in the decorative tin industry. Keith formed a group of companies associated through a series of reciprocal manufacturing and marketing agreements that allow each member factory to offer the products of the combined group. With this system, each member can offer containers from over 3,000 sets of tooling. Furthermore, through a system of proprietary manufacturing techniques, the resources of the member companies can be combined or loaned among the group to achieve unprecedented capabilities. To organize this international coalition, Keith set out to create his own company, and in 1988, VinCenzo International was born.
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