Brunello Cucinelli, known for his label’s sporty-chic wardrobe essentials and especially superluxe cashmere, has eked out sales growth during the recession and been a brilliant spot for Saks Fifth Avenue, the brand’s biggest U.S. account. A week-long celebration of their partnership culminates with a party tonight at Saks’ flagship.
“We’ve had just extraordinary performance with this brand,” said Ron Frasch, Saks Inc.’s chief merchandising officer. “The sell-throughs are crazy. In the middle of this recession, he has something fresh, appropriate, of extreme quality, super tasteful — and price is not an object. It just sells, from our big stores to our small stores.”
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This year, the brand has done $13.9 million in retail at Saks, with $3.9 million in men’s.
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In September, Saks had a direct mailer featuring exclusive Brunello Cucinelli product. On Wednesday, it installed the brand along with Italian cultural works, including an extremely rare first-edition of Dante’s “Divine Comedy,” in the Fifth Avenue store windows. Major cities in Umbria loaned pieces of medieval or Renaissance art from their museums.
Cucinelli studied land surveying and engineering in Perugia, Italy, in the Seventies before he spotted the business potential of applying wool dyeing methods to cashmere. By 1985 he had sold enough cashmere sweaters to buy and renovate a dilapidated 14th century castle in Solomeo, Italy. He moved his headquarters there, reviving the ancient hamlet in the process, and eventually expanded to a nearby campus with a park and a fruit orchard, believing people do their best work in a dignified setting. Employees have access to a cafeteria, health care and child care, among other services. Another reason Cucinelli offers his employees so much is that even in Italy, with its heritage of craftsmanship, it is difficult to recruit young people to do manual work.
“Young people don’t want to work in factories,” he said. “But if we want to make a product of quality, by hand, we need people to do that. So I create an environment where workers can find it beautiful and pleasing and harmonious. It makes them feel creative.” He reinvests 20 percent of the company’s revenues in Solomeo, restoring historic places and building public amenities such as a theater and a sports center.
“Everyone who works there can feel pride in creating that. We do it all together with our work,” he said. The company also helped build a kindergarten and a hospital in Malawi. “I believe in capitalism but it has to be enlightened. The concepts can be applied to your company, to any company.”
In September 2008, Cucinelli assured all of his 500 employees that their jobs were safe.
“I focused on my people to make sure everybody would get more creative, more special, more human, to get in touch again with those core values that are so important to human life,” said Cucinelli.
Saks was an early supporter, opening the brand’s first hard shop in the U.S., giving it a chance to showcase the lifestyle brand it had become. The line grew from knitwear into a full collection known for casual style and extreme quality. Cucinelli gives credit to Ralph Lauren for advancing sporty chic and men’s merchandising over the years. To those pillars Cucinelli has added his own Italian sense of fit and color.
“The shop has great visual appeal, with this great palette of neutrals and a couple of unique, unexpected colors. He has a fantastic eye for color and how it relates back to the more neutral palette,” said Frasch. “Women and men both want clothes that don’t made loud statements and that make them feel good.”
Brunello Cucinelli has U.S. stores on Bleecker Street in Manhattan, in East Hampton and Beverly Hills, and stores in the pipeline on Madison Avenue, in Las Vegas and in Bal Harbour, Fla. Those are necessary for brand building, but Cucinelli clearly prefers and relishes the partnership aspect of wholesaling. He has no interest in e-commerce because he believes luxury requires limited distribution to be truly luxurious.
Brunello Cucinelli had 2008 turnover of 144 million euros, or $212 million at current exchange. The U.S. accounted for 24 percent.
Year to date, U.S. wholesale revenue is $40.2 million, up 2.6 percent from last year and up 16.2 percent from 2007. Cucinelli aims to hit $70 million in three years.
Since orders for spring-summer are up 14 percent, the company is targeting 15 percent growth for 2010.
It continues to increase advertising spending, including a 10 percent rise in the U.S. this year.
“We didn’t ask magazines for discounts. We could have, but I don’t want to squeeze people,” said Cucinelli. “I want to have good relationships with them.”