Word: hugo
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Sitting front and center in a black suit and black shirt is tonight's ringmaster: Bruno Sälzer, 50, chairman and CEO of a company founded in 1923 not far from this field. Back then, it was a small sewing outfit helmed by a guy called Hugo Boss. Today Hugo Boss AG has a retail value of $6.5 billion and?for 2006, the year of the most recent declared figures?net sales of $1.97 billion with a net profit of $170 million. It also has 9,385 full-time employees, not to mention those working for subsidiaries around the world...
What follows is not the most earth-shattering fashion show, mostly because Hugo Boss clothes are designed for reality and not exaggerated for the runway. Yet it is certainly one of the biggest. A Paris extravaganza staged by Jean Paul Gaultier, for example, will probably feature 100 looks. But tonight an estimated 2,000 items, all impeccably made by Hugo Boss and not one of them a repeat, are shown under the labels Boss Black, Boss Orange and Hugo (both for men and women), as well as Boss Green and Boss Selection...
...scale of this operation: when it comes to giant single-fashion brands, Hugo Boss AG is huge (although not, it should be noted, as huge as Polo Ralph Lauren). LVMH (the market leader), Gucci Group/PPR and Richemont, which owns Chloé, are also bigger, but they are multi-brand conglomerates. Of the single brands, for menswear only, Hugo Boss is as big as its two nearest competitors, Giorgio Armani and Ermenegildo Zegna, combined. The company still makes 1.6 million suits a year, but that's old news; it now reflects a wider cultural shift and has repositioned itself from a suit...
Which is not to say that the decisions he has to make are always easy. In 2000 Hugo Boss had made a disastrous debut in the womenswear market that cost the company $75.8 million, or 38% of sales, over four years. The division was based in Milan, where, as Sälzer puts it, "the team had, collectively, thousands of years of experience. Yet the crazy thing was, there were big mistakes in all areas. The organization didn't work, and not because we don't know Milan. The problem was, the spirit didn't come over." Once in charge...
...Boss Black label being shown tonight, designed by Ingo Wilts, a German who has been promoted through the ranks, is sleek and sexy. Boss Orange, designed by Andrea Cannelloni, an Italian who has been with the company in Germany since 1998, is more casual. Tonight's finale showcases the Hugo label, the brand's most avant-garde offering, and marks the debut of Belgian designer Bruno Pieters, the first major creative appointment Boss has made outside the company since the Milan fiasco. Pieters' collection of compass-cut coats, jackets and tunics wows this audience, which rises to give a standing...