Luck begins at 40? A.S. Roma Direttore Digital Business!

I have waited a while to post about this because I keep waking up wondering if this is all actually happening.  At last check, you’ll recall I was at the wonderful world of Time Inc., not a bad place at all, but “stuck” as a sports fan in…womens fashion for StyleFeeder and StyleFind.  The last six months have seen an amazing development: via connections into the Boston based ownership group led by Tom DiBenedetto, that purchased the Italian Serie A Club A.S.Roma, I was approached about a role with the team.  In Late August, the purchase became official, and I was brought on in late September as the VP of Business Development for A.S. Roma Digital, or, in Italian, “Direttore Digital Business.”  It’s not total luck, after all Roma needs to launch eCommerce and I have spent the past 10 years at places like Amazon, eBay and Time Warner – it’s just proof to the fact that if you specialize in one area, over time you can turn it into something great.  I left the world of womens shoes to enter the world of soccer shoes, and here I am below in Roma legend Francesco Totti’s locker pretending to lace up my boots!

Totti's Locker

What a job! A.S. Roma is one of the top 20 clubs in the world, and I have had a soft spot for them EVEN as a diehard AC Fiorentina fan ever since il Re Leone, the king lion, Gabriel Batistuta left Fiorentina, went to Roma and won a scudetto.  The previous owners had viewed the website as merely brochureware, so the immediate course of action was (and is) to build a new website that engages fans, builds a database and creates reasons for return visitors.  We are also building a new online store, and most immediately launched a Facebook page and Twitter Page to start the interaction online with fans from around the world.

Official AS Roma Facebook

Twitter: @OfficialASRoma

My first trip to Rome was quite a thrill.  Some might call it work, but for me 15 hour days at Trigoria, the Stadio Olimpico, launching Social media efforts and setting a strategy up with the PR and eCommerce teams was a blast.  I sat with Tom at the Roma-Atalanta game, had a behind the scenes tour of the Stadio Olimpico, launched Facebook and Twitter to wild responses from fans and…the media.

Bloggers and mainstream papers like Il Messaggero, Corriere della Sera, Corriere dello Sport and Gazzetta dello Sport found it exciting that A.S.Roma was finally jumping into the digital age.

During the trip, I even met the legend himself, Francesco Totti, who posed for a Facebook picture to show fans that he was immediately at work rehabbing his injury. I go back next week, and stay tuned for video plus a new eCommerce store in the coming weeks. I now wonder indeed of “40×40″ was an omen for all of this.  For new readers of the blog, and Roma fans that stumble upon this, know that I am now giving everything I have for A.S.Roma.  You can’t fault me for being born in Florence and raised a Fiorentina fan, so if you read 40×40, know that it was written before I even knew about the group of Boston guys getting involved! I can now embrace both teams, much like…Gabriel Batistuta (and DeSisti, Graziani, Balbo, and now Osvaldo…)