Gunmaker's daughters now in charge

From Italia, on the story of Fausti Stefano Arms, a maker of high-end ($4,000 to $70,000) shotguns:

While her mother was busy doing other things, Giovanna Fausti and her two sisters would climb the stairs to the small workshop above their apartment and watch their father building firearms – and his reputation as one of the finest gunmakers in Italy.

It was not considered a place for young girls: Stefano Fausti, who founded the family business in 1948, would not even let his young daughters touch the guns he made.

(Sisters Elena, left, Giovanna, centre and below, and Barbara Fausti have taken the arms manufacturing business their father started to new successes. Courtesy Fausti Stefano Arms Factory)

“Twenty or 30 years ago it was not considered normal to give a shotgun into the hands of women,” Ms Fausti said.

“My father wanted to have a boy,” she added. “It was not common for a woman to be in this business. It’s a male business.”

But today the three daughters, Barbara, Elena and Giovanna, now with families of their own, are running the business and expanding the Fausti brand internationally. As part of that goal they will be bringing some on their company’s handmade, intricately engraved shotguns to the International Hunting and Equestrian Exhibition that begins Thursday in Abu Dhabi. ...

Article here.