Nice Brand Guidelines: The Oderzo Gate-Remote Maker That Grew Into a Home Automation Group

Three partners and a transmitter for gates.

Nice began in 1993 in Italy. Italian Wikipedia says the company was started by three partners, Lauro Buoro, Michele Falchetta and Oscar Marchetto, to make electronic transmitters for the automation of gates and garage doors. The company’s own history names Buoro, its chairman, as the founder, and describes the first products as remote controls and accessories for gate and garage-door automation.

The company says its idea at the start was as much about presentation as engineering. In the early 1990s, its history says, industrial goods were sold through “anonymous communication” that spoke only about basic functions; Nice set out to offer automated systems that were easy to use and quick to install, and friendly to the specifier, the installer and the end user alike. By 1995, it says, it was selling electronic and electromechanical products side by side as complete systems for gates and garage doors, and Italian Wikipedia dates its first branch abroad, in France, to the same year.

The partnership changed over the following two decades. Italian Wikipedia says Falchetta left in 2000 to take up another activity, and that Marchetto left in 2013, taking with him Venezia srl, a company that held side businesses including Somec, a maker of glass façades for cruise ships. Buoro remained the majority shareholder.

From gates to shutters, alarms and the smart home.

Nice grew outward from the gate. In the early 2000s it bought a maker of automation for awnings, rolling shutters and solar screens, which, the company says, let it offer automation for a whole building from a single transmitter. It also created Mhouse, a brand for large retailers and the do-it-yourself market, Italian Wikipedia says. Between 2001 and 2005 it opened sales branches in Poland, Spain, China, Belgium, the United Kingdom, Romania, Germany and the United States.

Design recognition came early. Italian Wikipedia records that in 2001 Nice won the 19th Compasso d’Oro, the Italian industrial-design award, in the “design for the environment” category.

On 19 May 2006 Nice listed on the STAR segment of the Borsa Italiana, the Milan stock exchange. Its headquarters in Oderzo, in the province of Treviso, opened on 26 May 2007, Italian Wikipedia says. The company says that in 2008 it moved into alarm systems and industrial doors and entered the American market; Italian Wikipedia names the purchases behind those moves as Silentron, which gave rise to the NiceHome wireless alarm line, and Apollo Gate Operators, an American maker of solar-powered gate operators.

The pace of acquisition rose after that. In 2010 Nice took a majority of the lighting company FontanaArte, founded in 1932 by Gio Ponti, and sold it in August 2016 to Italian Creation Group. In 2011 it bought the Peccinin group in Brazil, the gate and garage-door maker KINGgates, and the German sun-shading specialist elero. ET Systems of South Africa followed in 2015, and in 2016 HySecurity of Seattle, which makes automation for industrial and commercial gates. In 2017, Italian Wikipedia says, Nice closed a plant in China and brought that production back to Oderzo.

By 2018 the company was reaching into the connected home. That year it bought the Polish smart-home brand FIBARO, the Italian automation maker V2 and ACM of Rome, and took a majority of Abode Systems, a home-security company in Silicon Valley. In January 2019 it bought Micanan, a maker of commercial garage-door operators in Montreal, Italian Wikipedia says.

Barriers, columns and gates.

Most people meet parking and gate automation only at its edges: the striped barrier arm that lifts at a car park entry, the ticket column beside it, the pay station near the lift lobby and, more and more often, a camera that reads the number plate so that no ticket is issued at all. The companies in this series make those machines and the software that runs them, and their brands have to work on a steel cabinet standing in the rain as well as on a phone screen.

The series covers two neighbouring kinds of maker. Car park specialists sell access and revenue control systems to airports, shopping centres, hospitals, stadiums and city operators. Gate and door automation makers sell motors, control boards and remote openers for sliding and swing gates, garage doors and road barriers, equipment that installers fit, set up and service on site.

The settings these makers show are practical ones: a barrier at a busy entry lane, a pay station in a lit garage, a sliding gate in front of a villa, a training room where installers learn a control board.

Trade fairs give the industry its calendar. Intertraffic, held at the RAI in Amsterdam, is a large trade show for mobility and traffic technology, and runs its own awards for product innovation; R+T, a trade fair run by Messe Stuttgart, is another date in the calendar. This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it and what it says about its products — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Private again, with a fund alongside the founder.

Nice did not stay on the stock market. After a mandatory takeover offer launched in December 2018, the shares were delisted on 2 April 2019, Italian Wikipedia says. In 2021 the company bought Nortek Security & Control from Melrose Industries, adding American brands including 2GIG, ELAN, Linear and SpeakerCraft; Nice called it its largest investment to date, and the business later became Nice North America, according to the company’s press releases of October 2021 and November 2023.

Ownership changed again in 2023. On 29 November that year Nice and the Italian investor FSI completed an agreement announced in August: FSI took a minority stake through a reserved capital increase, its first investment from its second fund, and placed two representatives on the board, the business site BeBeez reported at the time. BeBeez added that, after the 2019 delisting, the company had been controlled by Buoro through his holding company, Benice Holding.

Today Nice S.p.A. is still based in Oderzo. On its website it describes itself as a maker of home management systems for gates and doors, sun shading, alarms and the smart home, and says it employs more than 2,000 people of over 40 nationalities, with 15 research centres and 15 production plants, serving customers in more than 100 countries. It also says it built ThePlace, a 3,000-square-metre space beside its headquarters, in 2015, and that in 2023 it was named one of Italy’s Best Managed Companies by Deloitte Private. Its chairman’s line on the about page sums up the pitch: the company has “evolved from merely producing devices to crafting memorable brand experiences.”

For a design guide, Nice shows how a maker of gate remotes can build a brand around ease of installation and then stretch it across a whole house. Compare CAME, another gate-automation family from the province of Treviso, and BFT, from nearby Vicenza. For this guide we use a harbour blue, a night slate and a pale steel with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Nice’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.