MILAN — Italian denimwear companies had been losing their edge even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck but the return of the Y2K aesthetic in recent seasons has turned the runway spotlight on denim once again, opening new opportunities for specialty brands that would otherwise be stalling.
Gas was among the pre-pandemic casualties in the jeanswear arena, with its now-former owner Grotto group dragging it out of bankruptcy and applying for a composition with creditor procedure that lasted five years.
Related Articles
Last spring, a pool of white knights came to the rescue with a court-managed takeover of the company, which is based in Chiuppano, Italy. Milano 1984 — a company controlled by entrepreneur and investor Andrea Citterio via his investment vehicle Duke, which is co-owned by Andrew Bordin — acquired a majority stake in Gas at a price pegged at 17.5 million euros.
You May Also Like
A third minority investor was found in tech-savvy Alpha Square Invest helmed by cofounder and chief executive officer Rino Castiglione, with two additional financial investors, DEA Capital and Amco, joining the group.
“The company is out of a five-year composition with creditors procedure and was hit hard by COVID-19; it was a tough landscape,” executive board member Castiglione said in an exclusive interview with WWD.
The brand’s financial and industrial stability, further weakened by the pandemic, was already impacted by a changing landscape that hit the traditional wholesale-based, digital-weak model of the ‘90s and Aughts when the brand reached its peak of success.
“Our first initiatives were aimed at giving back trust to the team and laying out a plan spelling out loud this was not a financial operation but rather a business initiative aimed at bringing the brand back to past glory,” Castiglione said.
“The relaunch starts from products…denim offering will be key as it represents the core business category. Gas is recognized and has a track record for its quality and services….It’s never been a strongly characterized fashion brand, rather its strength sat in its accessibility and versatility,” he explained.
The new management onboarded two key creatives, recruited from the Guess Inc. stable. Gregoria Carmagnino, a former Guess head designer, and Gianpaolo Camporese, head of design, menswear at the American denim giant, were appointed to the roles of creative director and head of design at Gas Milano 1984, respectively.
The first collection under the new creative team is to bow for fall 2023 and presented in December.
Castiglione noted that the strategy entails a stronger focus on adjacent categories, too, including outerwear and casual tops such as sweatshirts and T-shirts.
Cue the new name, Gas Milano 1984, which reflects the denimwear brand’s ambition to boost its positioning as a full-fledged fashion player.
As part of the five-year turnaround business plan, Castiglione said the goal is to double revenues in three years. In 2021, the denim specialist posted sales of 30 million euros.
A menswear-driven brand, the new owners are eager to achieve a more balanced split, with womenswear growing from the current 20 percent to 40 percent.
“At the apex of its success, Gas fashion for women was very successful,” Castiglione explained.
The brand built its success in the ‘90s and Aughts when wholesale was still the driving force. Although there is no plan to shift that model entirely, the executive acknowledged that there are tweaks to be made.
The brand will reduce its stock keeping units, drop four collections a year and inject newness via capsule collections now and then.
“It’s typically a retail-leaning model,” he said. “We’re not yet thinking about a retail strategy, but the model can easily and successfully apply to the brand.”
The tech-savvy Castiglione will also be key to instituting a digital strategy, compensating for the lost online sales over the past few years.
“Among the next steps, we will build a digital marketing team to grow our e-commerce operations and provide e-tailers, think Zalando and department stores’ online channels, with forward-looking services,” the executive said.
He noted, for example, that the brand’s extensive archives could get the digital treatment, offering new generations a glimpse into Gas’ multifaceted past, which included tie-ups with the Repsol Honda team for the MotoGP, among other initiatives.
Gas Milano 1984 counts around 500 stockists, mainly based in Italy. Castiglione said the domestic market will remain the primary focus together with Southern Europe and German-speaking countries, where denim consumption is among the highest.
“Until 15 years ago, Gas had a strong footprint in Europe [with local subsidiaries] and even in Japan,” Castiglione offered. To this end, a key priority on the manager’s agenda is to retrieve lost partnerships with department stores in the Old Continent, including El Corte Inglés, KaDeWe and Rinascente, among others.
A dedicated strategy on the U.S. and Canada, where majority shareholder Bordin is based, will follow.