Word: dieselized
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...deals and, more specifically, the dealmakers rocking the luxury business. What's fascinating in creative sectors like fashion and beauty is that often it's the outsiders who take the biggest risks and cash the biggest checks. Witness the way Renzo Rosso, once a lowly production manager at Diesel, eventually bought the company and propelled it into a $1.4 billion brand. Similarly, and against the odds, Max Azria transformed California-casual style into the $1 billion business BCBG. At the heart of any fashion deal is talent, and managing creative talent is a business skill all its own. Perhaps...
DEALMAKING IS BACK, at least in the $140 billion global luxury business. New money and new faces are changing the playing field. Private-equity firms are shopping for brands. Outsiders like Diesel's CEO Renzo Rosso and BCBG's Max Azria are shaking up the Establishment. Professional managers are reconfiguring the way designers do business. It's no longer just about talent. It's also about numbers, location (India! China!) and risk. It's about leveraging the moment. Here, a look at how fashion's big deals are shaping...
...AFTERNOON IN THE EARLY 1980S, the sales staff and agents of Genius Group, a mishmash of trendy Italian clothing labels, were previewing the upcoming collections and discussing strategy. When talk turned to their second-string, $7 million jeans company Diesel, a production manager with a minority stake and an unfashionable mustache upbraided the others, "Guys, take this seriously because one day we're going to be bigger than Levi...
...laughed and said, 'this guy is crazy,'" remembers former Genius president Adriano Goldschmied, who was running the meeting that day. "Diesel was a brand we had created to get rid of leftover fabrics and closeout stuff. We even chose an anti-movie-star name that said cheap, a slow car that smells...
...there were few objections when the upstart manager, Renzo Rosso, announced he wanted to swap out his group shares to become sole owner of Diesel. A modest farmer's son from outside Padua, Italy, with a textiles-trade-school diploma, Rosso, 50, is not your typical luxury-group CEO. Sure, he flies in private jets and frequents fashion shows, but most of the time he wears jeans or sweats, and his curly hairdo is more Peter Frampton than Bernard Arnault...