About Us
Astelav is a family run company with a strong commitment to customer care, founded in 1963 by Giorgio Bertolino, it is now approaching half a century of activity.
Founded as a Technical Support Centre (in Italian the name ASTELAV collects the initials of the words “assistance” “technical” “washing machines”) Astelav asserted itself – since the mid 60’s – as a leading European distributor of spare parts for home appliances.
Logistics
In the headquarters of Vinovo – which takes up a covered area of 5000 sqm, Astelav has developed its own integrated logistic system, considered by many to be one of the most ingenious and efficient. The warehouse, equipped with several thousand locations for boxes and pallets, is entirely mapped into the central computer (the last IBM AS 400) and it is managed in real time from a network of mobile terminals in radio frequency with barcodes scan system.
The activity of warehouse workers is based on a “production oriented” philosophy and this allows the achievement of excellent results in terms of logistic organization:
- 600 picking lines per picker man per day
- 120 deliveries per day
- 2 millions pieces in stock
- 20.000 codes normally handled
- over 1.000.000 original codes in our website
Astelav’s customers’ different requirements present in more than 70 countries in 5 continents are handled with flexibility by a system able to send a package to a customer in Southern Italy as well as a large full container to a wholesaler in Middle East or a pallet to a Northern Europe distributor.
Despite the large range of the products Astelav – thanks to its efficient organization of its Purchase Department – can record a level of service that is close to 90% of the main types of articles.
Furthermore, this has allowed Astelav to indicate to the customers ordering by Internet the real – time status availability of goods.
Marketing & Communication
Communication has always been a pleasure for us! Our first catalogue was in 1963 and we are preparing the latest one now: it is the business card of our company and therefore it must be graphically good, well printed, comprehensible and accurate.
We have moved quickly from telex to fax from typewriter to computer, from envelopes with stamps to e-mail, from CD to internet, not for the sake of being modern but to be able to communicate with our customers in the most efficient way.
The site www.astelav.com was opened in March 2001 and it has already put at the customers disposal the most important functions useful for their works.
Our first free-phone number, the service Pronto Astelav, has been operating since 1996.
Our graphic department processes all the documentation relating to products, services, promotions, special offers and deals with their publication in a coordinated and complete way.
For several years we have had multifunction colour printer, with which we are able to prepare brochures for the offers, small catalogues, price lists, etc… and we send them to the consumers together with the shipment of goods or by e-mail.
At Astelav communication means that our customers should know everything about our activities that we know.
It hasn’t been an easy job, but we’ve been successful by more than 50 years.