By Bruce Barton
 Nancy Verdtzabella owns and operates Los Altos’ newest retailer, Piacere Mio, which specializes in Italian style and handmade stationary. |
The magic of Italy has inspired one of downtown Los Altos’ newest retail stores, Piacere Mio (”My Pleasure”).
The stationery store, at 308 State St., offers fine paper products for custom-made wedding and birth announcements, thank-you cards, photo albums and journals. For hopeless romantics, the store sells paper imported from Italy so that love letters to Sophia Loren can be crafted without having to leave Los Altos.
Co-owners Nancy and Seyon Verdtzabella, who opened Piacere Mio Nov. 22, also offer a few non-paper gift items, such as a L’Erbolario Lodi line of soaps, perfumes and hand creams, and some jewelry.
Specialty pen and ink products also are for sale. Visitors can find Murano pens, which are crafted from glass, as well as the seal and wax used on letters in the old days.
“Nancy wants to bring paper back,” Seyon said, commenting on the move toward a paperless society. “She wants to bring back capturing memories on paper.”
“(Receiving a letter) is so much more personal than staring at the computer screen reading an e-mail,” Nancy said. “When you read an e-mail, you tend to skim through it. When it’s a letter, you sit down and get comfortable and take your time reading it.”
The Verdtzabellas, who both teach at Bing Nursery School on the Stanford University campus, have been pursuing a small retail shop for more than a year. They chose Los Altos because “we love the small-town, village feel.” The Mountain View residents opened the retail store on the date of their sixth wedding anniversary.
Nancy grew the business out of a hobby of making note cards. She started acquiring equipment to make them, and then began bookbinding using handmade papers. After continuing to expand the product line, she and Seyon began selling at arts and wine festivals.
A lover of writing and attention to detail, Nancy is enthralled with Italian culture. “I love the beauty and care they put into everything,” she said of the Italian merchants.
Having taken at least 10 trips to Italy, Nancy has met most of the artisans with whom she does business.
“We have some very unique items for gift giving,” Seyon said. “What we emphasize is quality. It’s not the most economic product, but it is something special.”
Customer service also will be a highlight to any Piacere Mio visit, Nancy said, because people will be known by name and helped to the greatest degree possible.
So far, people seem interested in the store, Seyon observed. “We’ve been well received by all of our customers. They’re saying, ‘We’re glad you’re here, we’ll be back.’”
“Our little store has brought back memories (for customers),” Nancy said. The Los Altos downtown, she said, reminds her of the small retail shops of Italy with their “quaint and small spaces.”
Piacere Mio is open 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday. For more information, call 559-9111 or logon to: www.piacere-mio.com.
