Ariston Group was founded in 1930 through the initiative of Aristide Merloni, an Italian man living an unprecedented global crisis, who had a dream. After emigrating to pursue his career, he returned to his hometown Albacina, in the Marche region of Italy, driven by the purpose of ensuring that young generations would no longer have to leave in search of employment. On July 6th, in a small shed with only six employees, he started his own factory, turning a vision into reality and sowing the seeds of our group’s future.

When our founder Aristide Merloni started his own activity, he began producing professional scales. As he leveraged on the competencies achieved in his previous professional experience, his entrepreneurial acumen pushed him towards pursuing technology innovation and top-notch quality standards. He started producing an innovative tilting machine, entirely built in metal, which enabled a radical change in production processes. By the end of the ‘30s, his company counted 70 employees and revenues for 500,000 lire.

During his engineering studies, Francesco Merloni, son of our founder Aristide and father of Paolo, our Executive Chairman, developed a project for a welded cylinder factory. At the end of the ‘50s, the new factory produced more than 5000 cylinders per day and, as quality of life improved in the ‘60s, the company decided to further diversify the production towards electric water heaters. The first water heater was produced in Matelica, Italy, in 1959 – a durable good fulfilling the need for hot water in homes. Today, our strategic global brand Ariston is still synonymous with comfort through water heating in many countries in the world.

On January 25th, 1979, Merloni Finanziaria S.p.A., the name of our group at that time, made history as the first Italian company to release a Social Report. Published by Battelle Centre de Recherche de Geneve institute, the report evaluated our sustainability efforts across various dimensions, alongside our financial perfomrmance. Among the assessments, it highlighted key indicators such as employee training hours and apprenticeships, the consumption of non-renewable raw materials, and the proportion of recycled materials. The institute’s choice to feature our company was driven by our distinctive industrial philosophy: a commitment to social responsibility that has accompanied Ariston Group over the years.