CONTENTS:
- The Leonardo da Vinci of Val Chiavenna
- Hands That Never Stand Still
- On the Other Side of the Workbench
- Against the Wind
- The First Vise
- Without Making a Fuss
- First and Foremost, a Craftsman
- The Birth of a Legend
- Ideas Are Never in a Hurry
- The Luxury of Time
- The Tip of the Iceberg
- When Passion Casts Off
- In the End, Franco
1. THE LEONARDO DA VINCI OF VAL CHIAVENNA
Franco Cottarelli. If you tie flies and haven't been living on the Moon for the past twenty years, you will almost certainly have heard the name at least once. These days, it is practically impossible to attend a fly tying competition without seeing at least a couple of his vises on the benches.
But have you ever wondered who is behind that surname – a name that, over the years, has become far more than just a family name and grown into one of the best-known brands in the world of fly tying?
If you are as curious as I was, stay with me and meet the craftsman behind the brand and, above all, the man behind the craftsman.
Franco Cottarelli with his historic collection of vintage fly reels
2. HANDS THAT NEVER STAND STILL
On 22 September 1947, in Gazzo Veronese, Franco Cottarelli is born.
From an early age, Franco shows an unusual level of curiosity and a natural instinct for anything that can be built, taken apart or repaired. When he looks at an object, he does not seem to see only what it is. He instinctively wants to know how it works, what is hidden inside it and, above all, whether there might be a way to make it work better.
Fishing is already one of his passions in those early years, and inevitably his curiosity follows him to the riverbank as well. That is where his first small fishing-related inventions begin to take shape: still simple and rudimentary, perhaps, but already driven by that almost instinctive need to modify, improve and build things with his own hands.
Fishing has been part of Franco's life since he was a boy
For many years, however, this natural aptitude remains little more than a hobby, something he pursues in his spare time between one object built and another repaired. In the meantime, Franco makes ends meet as best he can, moving from one occasional job to the next, without yet having found a clear path to follow. His youth passes in much the same way until, as happened to so many young men of his generation, the time comes to put everything aside and leave for military service.
Franco fishing with a fixed-line rod
Once his military service is over, Franco returns to everyday life, although for a while his hands seem to be more at home with musical instruments than with workshop tools. Together with a few friends, he forms a band and enjoys playing the songs that are captivating an entire generation at the time: The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and the other great names of an unforgettable musical era.
A young Franco Cottarelli as a musician, wearing the orange trousers on the left
But his passion for mechanics never goes away. And when the time comes to enter the world of work, it is that passion that points him in the right direction. Franco finds a job in a mechanical workshop, and it is here that the natural aptitude he has carried with him since childhood finally finds an environment in which it can grow. Surrounded by machines, tools, metal and precision machining, Franco begins to turn his lifelong curiosity and instinct into genuine technical expertise.
Gear from the Synchron fly reel
3. ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE WORKBENCH
The turning point comes almost by chance. One of the machinery suppliers used by the company Franco works for decides to close down. For Franco, however, that closure becomes an opportunity. He decides to buy some of the machinery and take a new path by setting up on his own.
It is a major step. After years spent working as an employee, Franco now finds himself standing in front of his own machines, free to put the experience and skills he has built up in the workshop to use on his own terms. His own business is born, producing mechanical components for other companies.
And, in a way, things come full circle almost immediately. The company he had worked for until then, the very workshop in which he had refined his skills, becomes one of his customers. Franco continues to work for the people who, only a short time earlier, had been his employers – except that now he does so on his own machines, in his own workshop and, for the first time, from the other side of the workbench.
At work on the lathe
4. AGAINST THE WIND
As the years pass, the business continues to grow. Franco manufactures mechanical components for other companies, working across a variety of industries, but one particular contract gradually becomes increasingly important: the production of bushings for ski boot bindings.
Orders increase, and the workshop grows with them. Franco invests in new machinery and steadily expands production capacity. What had started with only a handful of machines eventually reaches a considerable scale. At its peak, the workshop houses almost 150 machines, including around sixty lathes running virtually non-stop.
Then something changes.
Chinese manufacturers enter the market, able to produce the same bushings at roughly 30% lower cost. On a component manufactured in large quantities, a difference like that has an enormous impact and makes it increasingly difficult to compete.
After years of growth, Franco suddenly finds his company fighting against a strong headwind.
The very product that had contributed most to the expansion of his business is suddenly exposed to competition that is almost impossible to fight on price alone.
Another path has to be found.
Franco is forced to reinvent himself. He begins looking elsewhere, searching for new markets and new opportunities that can make use of the expertise and production capacity he has built up over the years. Little by little, he manages to diversify the business, secure new contracts and give the company fresh momentum.
It is far from an easy transition, but in the end he manages to take firm control of the business once again, bringing the workshop back to full capacity and leaving one of the most difficult periods in its history behind him.
At work on the lathe
5. THE FIRST VISE
During those years, an old passion begins to play an increasingly important role in Franco's life again: fly fishing. It is a world he has known since he was young and, after spending some time in the background, it gradually becomes a regular part of his life once more.
Through fly fishing, Franco once again finds himself surrounded by people, ideas and, above all, friendships – some of them very close ones. Among those who play an important part in this chapter of his story are Meret Giuliano, known to everyone as Lallo, Cosimo Schena, or Mimmo to his friends, Osvaldo Gilli, Massimo Ginnaneschi and Sandro Mandrini. Friends and fellow enthusiasts who know his work well and know exactly what he is capable of doing with a lathe in his hands.
It is in this atmosphere of conversations, suggestions and new acquaintances that, almost as a challenge, someone asks a question that will have consequences nobody could have expected.
“With everything you know how to make, why don't you build a fly tying vise yourself?”
Franco hardly needs convincing to take on a challenge like that.
The idea intrigues him. He starts examining existing vises, studying how they work and thinking about how he might interpret the concept in his own way. Then he does what he has always done whenever an idea starts turning over in his mind. He walks into the workshop and tries to give it shape.
And so the Cottarelli Standard is born, Franco's first fly tying vise.
The Standard is not created as an answer to the company's difficulties, nor with the ambition of becoming a large-scale product. It is, much more simply, the point where two passions that had until then run alongside one another in Franco's life finally meet: fly fishing and mechanics.
Franco does not know it yet, but that vise will become the first step in a story that will make his surname known among fly tyers all over the world.
6. WITHOUT MAKING A FUSS
At the time, of course, social media did not exist, and getting a new product noticed worked very differently from today. Franco, for his part, has never been particularly interested in advertising. His way of promoting the Standard is much simpler. He puts a few of them into the hands of well-known fly tyers and lets the vise, and the people using it, speak for him.
The strategy, simple as it may be, works. Word of mouth does the rest, and before long Cottarelli vises begin appearing on the benches of established fly tyers and in fly fishing clubs. The name also spreads quickly within IFTA circles, until it becomes difficult to find anyone who has not seen, tried or used one of his vises.
Among the vises Franco gives away during that period, one ends up in the hands of Francesco Palù, a legendary figure in the world of fly tying.
His relationship with the Standard, however, does not get off to the best of starts. At first glance, Palù is not particularly impressed, and his initial verdict is anything but enthusiastic. Over time, however, something changes. As he uses it, he begins to understand its potential, revises that first impression and ultimately comes to use it with real satisfaction.
It is a small episode, but one that says a great deal about how Franco's vises begin to build their reputation. Not through advertising campaigns or major commercial operations, but by passing from one fly tyer's hands to another, tested by people who genuinely spend their time tying flies. That is how the Cottarelli name begins to spread: through the quality of Franco's creations and the recommendations of those who use them. One vise at a time, without grand claims and, above all, without making a fuss.
7. FIRST AND FOREMOST, A CRAFTSMAN
At this point in the story, it would be easy to assume that Franco had recognised the commercial potential of his creations and had begun building a company and a sales strategy around his name. The reality is almost the exact opposite.
His interest begins with a problem that needs solving, continues at the lathe as an idea takes shape, and finds its real reward when the finished object ends up in the hands of someone who uses it and appreciates it. The fact that it might also be sold comes later – much later.
Perhaps that is exactly why, despite the fact that the Cottarelli name has become a recognised brand throughout the fly tying world, Franco has never really become a businessman in the conventional sense of the word. Even today, he prefers to leave the commercial side of his creations to others, and it is not unusual for the companies responsible for selling them to have to rein him in when he wants to offer them at prices they consider too low.
Franco is, first and foremost, a craftsman.
8. THE BIRTH OF A LEGEND
After the Standard comes what, over the years, will probably become Franco Cottarelli's most iconic fly tying vise: the Travel. A model destined to find its way onto the tying benches of countless professionals around the world and which, even today, remains the best-selling vise of all those he has designed.
What makes it instantly recognisable is its innovative folding tripod. It is a solution that is as simple as it is ingenious, allowing the three legs to fold in on themselves and making the vise exceptionally compact and easy to transport.
When Franco designs it, a system like this does not exist on any other vise. And perhaps even more remarkable is the fact that, many years later, that solution remains a distinctive feature of the Travel to this day.
The model's success eventually speaks for itself. Of all the inventions that take shape in Franco's workshop over the years, the Travel becomes the vise most widely used by professional fly tyers.
A remarkable achievement for something that, once again, grew out of Franco's ability to take an apparently ordinary problem and solve it in a way nobody else had thought of before.
9. IDEAS ARE NEVER IN A HURRY
Fly tying vises are undoubtedly the creations that have made the Cottarelli name famous throughout the fly tying world, but they represent only part of what has emerged from Franco's mind and workshop over the years. Alongside them come countless accessories for fly tying and, above all, fly reels.
And it is precisely when the conversation turns to reels that I notice a particular spark of enthusiasm in Franco.
The reason is closely tied to the way he thinks. A fly reel is mechanically more complex than a vise. It requires more components, precise tolerances and more sophisticated technical solutions. In other words, it presents a greater challenge. And for someone who has spent a lifetime looking for problems to solve, the greater the difficulty, the more enjoyable the process of finding a solution seems to become.
Franco begins designing and building fly reels as early as the first years of the 2000s. Over time, he produces several different versions, experimenting with different mechanisms and solutions, yet for more than twenty years none of these projects is turned into a product intended for sale.
It is not until 2025 that one of his reels is finally brought to market. It is called Synchron, and it is the first fly reel designed by Franco Cottarelli to make the full journey from his workshop to the market.
And perhaps it is in those more than twenty years between the first experiments and the commercial launch of the Synchron that Franco's relationship with his creations becomes clearest. No company would spend more than two decades developing a product before worrying about selling it. But Franco does not think like a company. He thinks like a craftsman. For him, an idea is not necessarily born to become a product. First and foremost, it comes from the pleasure of imagining it, building it and discovering whether it can work. His ideas are in no hurry to become products.
All the fly reels Franco has made over the years and never brought to market – except one
10. THE LUXURY OF TIME
It is important, however, not to mistake Franco's distance from the commercial side of things for being out of touch with reality. For most of his life, Franco's real work lay elsewhere. The business was sustained primarily by large orders for mechanical components manufactured for other companies, while vises and accessories, although they naturally generated an income of their own, always occupied a different place in his life: that of a passion that also happened to repay the time and effort he devoted to it.
After all, there is no large production operation behind Cottarelli vises. Franco, his wife and his daughter are still the only people involved in their development, design, production and assembly. From the initial idea to the finished product, everything passes through the hands of just three people. It is this family dimension that helps explain the true nature of these objects, but it also inevitably places limits on how many can be produced.
Large-scale production would inevitably require an entirely different organisation, one that would be difficult to reconcile with the way Franco has always worked. If he had to make his living exclusively from his vises, he probably could not afford to build them at the same pace or with the same freedom.
Today, after a lifetime of work, Franco is retired and financially secure enough that he no longer needs his creations to provide him with a living. He can afford what, for a craftsman like him, may well be the greatest luxury of all: time. Time to build without chasing large production numbers, to refine an idea without wondering whether it makes commercial sense and, above all, to continue doing all of this first and foremost as a passion.
Because passion may be what drives all of this, but passion alone does not pay the bills. The difference is that Franco no longer needs every hour he spends in the workshop to be financially productive. And that allows him to keep building the way he has always preferred: at his own pace, alongside his family, without letting numbers dictate the rhythm of his work.
11. THE TIP OF THE ICEBERG
Behind the vises, reels and accessories we know lies a much larger world of prototypes, experiments and inventions that Franco has designed and built over the course of his life.
Hidden away in drawers, on workshop shelves and probably in his memory too are ideas the public has never seen. Some remained simple experiments, others became fully functional prototypes, while others still were built, tested, modified and then simply set aside when Franco's curiosity moved on to something new.
Double-blank fly rod with guides running along the centre
Many of these creations never became products and probably never will. Not necessarily because they do not work or are not interesting enough, but because turning an invention into something that can be sold has never been an essential part of what gives Franco's work its meaning. An idea can exist simply out of curiosity, from the desire to experiment or from wanting to discover whether a particular solution is actually possible.
Handmade spinning lures
Perhaps it is this vast, unseen part of his work that tells us more about who Franco really is than any catalogue ever could. What we can buy is only the tip of the iceberg of everything he has imagined and built. Everything else belongs to a more intimate side of craftsmanship, where there does not necessarily have to be a market to reach, a price to set or a customer to convince.
Because for Franco, inventing has never simply been a way of creating new products. Before anything else, it is the pleasure of discovering whether something that exists in his mind can also be made real by his hands.
12. WHEN PASSION CASTS OFF
I had the pleasure of spending two days with Franco and his family, and during that time I listened as he described some of the countless things he has designed and built over the course of his life. Whenever he spoke about one of his creations, his eyes would light up with the genuine enthusiasm of someone who, long before taking pride in the result, simply enjoyed the challenge of getting there.
And yet, among all the vises, reels, tools and inventions of every kind, there was one thing more than any other that he seemed eager to show me. His boat.
Simply calling it a boat, however, hardly does it justice.
When Franco buys it, it is nothing more than a simple aluminium hull. From that moment on, he begins transforming, adapting and modifying it to suit his own needs, gradually adding an astonishing number of solutions born from his own ingenuity. Every inch of space seems to have been carefully considered, every mechanism serves a purpose, and every problem encountered on board seems to have become yet another opportunity to invent something.
The result is difficult to describe without seeing it for yourself. More than a boat, it feels like an enormous floating workshop, packed with mechanisms and ingenious handmade solutions that reveal exactly the same way of thinking found in his vises and reels.
And it is while looking at the boat that the nickname I chose for Franco at the beginning of this story suddenly stops sounding like an exaggeration. Standing in front of it, surrounded by all its mechanisms, modifications and inventions, it is difficult not to feel as though you are looking at something lifted straight from one of Leonardo da Vinci's drawings.
Except that this time, Leonardo lives in Val Chiavenna.
The creation he is proudest of: his boat
13. IN THE END, FRANCO
Having reached the end of this story, some might think I have emphasised certain aspects of Franco's life and personality. Perhaps I have. After all, having had the privilege of spending time with him and his family, it would be difficult for me to pretend to be entirely impartial.
I met some extraordinary people and, above all, had the chance to get to know the man behind the surname with which this story began.
And perhaps that is what struck me most about Franco.
Behind decades of inventions, vises used around the world, reels, machinery and countless objects born from his mind and his hands, I found a remarkably unassuming man. Franco talks about the things he has created with the enthusiasm of a boy, without ever giving the impression that he feels the need to impress you with what he has achieved.
There is a genuine humility about him, almost as if he is unaware of it himself. That rare kind of humility found in someone who has no need to tell you what he is worth, because he has spent an entire lifetime letting his work speak for him.
Gabriele and Franco
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