SPORTSWEAR COMPANY SPORTSWEAR COMPANY AN INTRODUCTION

1 History of an idea

2 Management Profile: Mr Carlo Rivetti (President)

3 Two brands, one style Sportswear Company How a new product is born

4 C.P. Company bRANd Profile Stores Corporate Identity global Presence

5 Stone Island bRANd Profile Stores Corporate Identity global Presence THE HISTORY OF AND IDEA

Its name belongs to the recent past but it draws on a history of entrepreneurial success that makes it one of the most well respected companies in the panorama of «made in Italy» informal clothing. Sportswear Company was first set up in Ravarino, a town on the border between the provinces of Bologna and Modena in 1974. At that time it was known as Chester Perry.

In 1975, it changed its name to C.P. Company: this marked the start of a brand that was destined to revolutionize the whole idea of informal clothing, declining shape and content well beyond the traditional jeans and casual clothing and charting the unexplored territory of new fabrics, new lines and new functionality.

It was during this process that Stone Island, the second brand destined to flank C.P. Company, took shape in 1982. Stone Island emerged surprisingly by chance, following a dye test on a typically industrial fabric, the cloth used for truck tarpaulins. The extreme originality of its design has been a hallmark of these unique garments at the forefront of innovative clothing.

C.P. Company was taken over in the mid Eighties by the GFT Group and Trabaldo Togna. Under the guidance of the new managing director, Carlo Rivetti, one of the controlling shareholders of GFT together with his cousin Marco, the Ravarino-based company became the center of sportswear clothing production for the large group from Turin.

Its activities received a tremendous boost through the involvement of the European colossus of prêt-à-porter clothing which produced some of the most well-known names of «made in Italy» fashions: the Ravarino based company started to make new collections beside its core labels such as Bonneville, Taverniti, Taverniti Little and Martin Guy. An agreement was also signed with Fendi for the production and distribution of the Fendissime brand. In the meantime GFT finalized plans to acquire the entire company.

In September 1993, in line with the Turinese group’s selling off policies, the company was purchased by Carlo and Cristina Rivetti and renamed Sportswear Company. Carlo Rivetti took over the office of chairman. MANAGEMENT PROFILE: MR CARLO RIVETTI - PRESIDENT

The Rivetti family is one of the best known dynasties in the Italian textile panorama: it can count seven generations of entrepreneurs who have played an active role in the historic industry based around Biella since the mid 18th century.

In the late Fifties, the family founded one of the leading European clothing manufacturers: the Turin-based GFT Group. Carlo Rivetti’s father, Silvio, was the founder of GFT. In the 50’s, GFT introduced in Italy the first ready to wear Italian men’s and women’s brands, Facis and Cori: By studying the strategies and production systems used by major American companies in this sector, Silvio Rivetti laid the foundations for what became the leading European clothing manufacturer in the Eighties.

The growth of GFT continued under the guidance of the cousins, Marco and Carlo Rivetti. They turned the company into the most important industrial partner for the designers who led the «made in Italy» revolution in the Seventies and Eighties.

In those years GFT has been the first company to close license deals with fashion designers such as Giorgio Armani, Emanuel Ungaro, Valentino. This brought to the birth of the so called Made in Italy phenomena. In the mid eighties, GFT also decided to expand in the informal fashion business and became first partner and then the sole owner of Massimo Osti’s C.P. Company.

In 1993 Carlo Rivetti and his sister Cristina decided to leave the family company before taking over the informal clothing branch of the group centered on C.P. Company in Ravarino, which was promptly renamed Sportswear Company, owner of the brands C.P. Company and Stone Island. Mr. Rivetti became President of the company.

This marked the start of an entrepreneurial challenge based on the conviction that high-level sportswear today represents the most advanced and most innovative segment in the entire sector.

Born in 1956, Carlo Rivetti graduated in economics at Bocconi University in Milan, where he lives with his wife Sabina and his three children. He believes in teamwork, the importance of research and in a product that is the outcome of the combination of technology, function, quality and elegance. He can rely on the expert skills of someone who has worked in this sector for years, coupled with the irreverent imagination of a man who has never failed to follow through his own choices, no matter how eccentric they might seem at the time.

Carlo Rivetti also dedicates some of his time to teaching. He is Professor of Industrial Design Marketing at Politecnico University in Milan and sits in the scientific committee of I.E.D. (Istituto Europeo di Design). He teaches Marketing and Fashion at L.U.N.A. (Free University of the Arts) in Bologna. Carlo Rivetti is among the founders of the ”Fondazione ADI” (Italian Industrial Design Foundation) where he sits in the board of directors. He also sits in the board of directors of SMI-ATI, the Italian federation of textile and fashion industries, of Altagamma, the association of Italian luxury brands, and of Pitti Immagine, organisers and producers of the most important Italian clothing fairs in Florence and Milan.

TWO BRANDS, ONE STYLE - SPORTSWEAR COMPANY

“This is the only company of its kind. It resembles a kitchen in which the chefs never tire of mixing ingredients in different proportions in search of new flavors. The passion for the resulting product and the team spirit are so strong that they infect every segment of the production process and even the suppliers who work for us outside the company. This is why I believe that Sportswear Company is a unique example in the Italian and world clothing sector. It is a completely flexible company that dedicates the majority of its resources to product design and development – at least 70 out of 115 employees work on this phase – whereas the industrial constraints are only introduced at the end of the process. This is a corporate model that overturns conventional logic in this sector».” This is how the Chairman, Carlo Rivetti, described Sportswear Company. HOW A NEW PRODUCT IS BORN

The guiding thread of Sportswear Company lies in the creativity of its stylistic personnel, combined with such advanced production techniques that it has more in common with a research laboratory than a clothing manufacturer.

The development of a garment labeled C.P. Company and Stone Island can be broken down into three basic stages: the styling department, the product department and the industrialization office.

The first stage, the styling department, is not carried out by an isolated designer, but rather a staff capable of picking up the «weak signals» of the changes occurring in the external world, thus enabling the company to anticipate changes before they happen. This is the daily challenge facing Sportswear Company. The second stage, the product department, represents the delicate interface between the designers and the company. This takes place in two phases: evaluating the feasibility of the project irrespective of its commercial compatibility and then embarking on the experimental phase that takes account of economic aspects. The product department guarantees the coordination of research and the stylistic staff, whereas the model department is the ideal link between the various phases of experimentation, research and product industrialization.

Lastly, the industrialization office oversees the creation of the sample collection, the final stage in a production process that reveals the company’s outstanding flexibility. Sportswear Company can effectively combine a highly qualified work force with tailoring skills, avant-garde stylistic creativity and sophisticated technology destined to create unique garments guaranteed to impress consumers. Sportswear Company today employs 115 direct employees. Over 1 million garments are produced every year.

Research and the constant innovation of raw materials are essential for the development of these products. By investing huge sums in human resources and machines, Sportswear Company has set up and developed a dye-works and in-house print shop capable of finished garments that are unrivalled by other companies in this sector. The research dye-works - a rarity among clothing manufacturers and therefore jealously protected – now holds over 60,000 dye formulas in its files and can experiment and carry out rubberizing, coating, washing and sophisticated double dyeing operations using almost any type of raw material.

The in-house knitwear shop is equally innovative and high-tech. It employs highly specialized workers able to study every type of stitch and every possible type of yarn assembly, using both yarn dyeing and garment dyeing procedures. The in-house making-up shop produces all the prototypes and samples for the new collections.

The samples are distributed to a network of highly tested manufacturers, thus confirming its strategic choice of total product quality control.

Sales rely on a well-proven network of agents and foreign importers who have developed the presence of Sportswear Company, in Italy and around the world. The house brands, C.P. Company, declined in menswear, womenswear and undersixteen collections and Stone Island declined in Stone Island, Stone Island Denims and Stone Island Junior, belong to the highest tier of the informal clothing market and embody the idea of a sophisticated, anti-conformist city sportswear, easily identifiable by its practically unique style and quality. C.P. COMPANY - BRAND PROLFILE

The C.P. Company brand was created in 1975. The research path that inspired the collection can be traced to two distinct subjects at the root of the male wardrobe: traditional military uniforms and working clothes.

These two historic traditions inspired the philosophy which has characterized the C.P. Company brand ever since: Function and use.

Uniforms have always combined functionality with elegance: every detail reflects the specific function for which it was conceived and made. Volumes and wearability, fabric weight and characteristics, pockets and other ingenious details have always been created for men who need to perform extremely precise functions. Uniforms were also expected to be elegant, reflecting the wearer’s status.

Working and sports clothes also reflect the same prerogatives of functionality: as an example, clothing used by hunters, fishermen, racing drivers, riders and sailors forms all have shapes, materials, treatments and details functional to the expected performance.

This constant research has enabled C.P. Company to collect 40,000 garments dating from the late 19th century to modern times: an essential heritage which accounts for much of the company’s know-how.

These historical roots have been flanked over time by another line of research aimed at the development of clothing functions: technological research applied to fabrics, finished garments and the processes used to make them.

C.P. Company’s suppliers are asked for specially studied one-off articles with unique characteristics: ranging from blends of ultra- lightweight fibers capable of absorbing colors in an original way to more innovative techniques of coating, flocking and brushing.

Once the garments have been made, the untreated fabrics are dyed and then undergo special treatments in C.P. Company’s dye-works and experimental print shop, a department that is capable of combining advanced technology, know-how and human craftmanship, resulting in the production of virtually unique jackets and sports jackets, sweaters, shirts and trousers.

The «historic» items in the C.P. Company collections are flanked by sophisticated and always functional new themes focused on the evolution of contemporary taste. These are aimed at men – and for the past fewer seasons also women – whose work and leisure is based in a metropolitan dimension.

Considerable attention is now focused on the evolution of urban working clothes, the reinterpretation of trades, the personalization of uniforms that allow the best points to be developed without the constraints implied by the name. There is constant research for functional details, occasionally borrowed from the clothing worn by policemen, motorcyclists, airport workers, and flanked by the constant research for the exclusive fabrics and treatments that have always been the brand’s hallmark.

In a world that places a growing emphasis on the unique nature of the individual and where the “uniform” of the gray suit holds less sway, C.P. Company’s innovative and anti-conformist philosophy has become increasingly relevant and is closely followed, often imitated but never equaled, a symbol of intelligent individuality, functionality and refined taste.

Non-conventional fabrics and de-structured cuts with extremely accurate details are the key features of these garments which are warmly appreciated by urban professionals. The men and women who love C.P. Company are individuals who see in this brand the breadth of a culture that blends the best of functional tradition with a search for the avant-garde trends of the future. C.P. COMPANY - STORES CORPORATE IDENTITY

The new retail concept for C.P. Company has been designed by Italian duo architect team Park Associati. The concept wants to develop a functional idea turning it into an aesthetic statement.

All the shop walls are covered with oiled plywood panels, holding Perspex ® horizontal lines covered by strips of last generation extremely strong transparent 3M Velcro ®. This “intelligent” wall concept is designed to support aluminum lacquered white shelves and panels hosting hanging and folded garments as well as lights and communication tools like photos and graphic.

Therefore every wall become a support to stow an endless variations of merchandise/communication tools. A kit of various elements permits to create different configurations: shelves in different sizes, panels with regular or frontal hanging, mirrors, graphic panels, lamps. The flexibility of this display system, besides allowing different configurations according to periods of quantity of merchandise to be exposed, becomes also the mean to underline the true values of C.P. Company: formal simplicity and richness of details.

Every material is interpreted in order to reach a tactile and figurative unusual originality. The floor in black waxed and laser-cut iron plates, is laid random as a parquet; the same iron plate is used to enrich component as tables and counters in contrast with white transparent glass and opaque lacquered white aluminum sheets. All the custom made furniture and fittings play with the contrast created by mixing raw and simple materials (iron plates, plywood) with the richness and care of the details.

The plywood of the paneling is whitened and oiled and treated with to underline the natural feel of the material; the shelves and the panels in thin plates of opaque lacquered aluminum allow great strength as well as easy movement fit them to the walls.

The light in the store is both a technical element for the correct illumination of the merchandise and a sign of important visual characterization: a big suspended costume made bright light becomes an important and very visual structure to hang the clothes; the hookup system for the hangers fitting this lamp is inspired airplane safety belts.

C.P. COMPANY - GLOBAL PRESENCE AND MARKETS

CP Company is distributed worldwide in the best multibrand boutiques and dept. stores and in a network of monobrand stores and corners. Currently, overall there are around 700 point of sales and the main markets are: Italy, Europe, Japan, Korea and US. STONE ISLAND - BRAND PROFILE

The origin is the same, but we can find different ways of conjugating it, different ways of showing it. C.P. Company and Stone Island are not only two distinct brands, but also two completely different worlds offered to different publics conveying the same message.

Since the label was born in 1981 the aim of Sportswear Company has always been to create through the Stone Island collection a designed and innovative top line in the sportswear panorama, with a high concern in function and use of the garments.

Stone Island has undertaken innovative research into fibers and textiles never previously used in the clothing industry. This brand pushes the frontier of research further forward in each new collection, in a manufacturing world still dominated by processes and materials linked to tradition. This has resulted in products that are absolutely unique in terms of the materials used and procedures adopted. The production procedures are often adapted from completely different industrial sectors and when applied to clothing, instead of standardizing production they produce unrepeatable garments.

Outdoor jackets are made from monofilament that creates a dense mesh derived from water filtering technology. Lightweight nylon films that are vacuum coated with a microscopic stainless steel film used in aviation technology to protect onboard computers. Non-woven fabrics, fiber , rhomboid nylon mesh used in the construction industry with a polyurethane coating. These are just some examples produced by Stone Island’s philosophy.

But this is no abstruse and pointlessly exasperated research: design is dictated by contemporary needs. Stone Island offers an absolutely innovative response in its fabrics, models and production techniques. Every new season shows how far it can carry us into the world of clothing.

The brand is also characterized by the different nature of its display: Stone Island exhibits its own brand not only through the use of visible labels, but also its choice of a vast range of strong colors. Stone Island offers a collection of unique, single items.

STONE ISLAND - STORES CORPORATE IDENTITY

The Store Corporate Identity project is called “Item/Unit” and has been invented, designed and engineered by Marc Bhure, owner of the German design company Zeichenweg TM. The idea behind the design is the total layout flexibility.

Stainless steel square pedestals (Item) laid on stainless steel floor are the core element of the project. The pedestals are meant to hold luminous fibre glass or oak and carbon “sabres” (Unit) thought as a support for the clothing bars and or also used as window and island display. The shelving is in Dibond® covered with black takes inspiration from systems used in the sailing world.

All elements of the store have been custom made designed with a clean, contemporary and functional look. The marriage of innovative materials such as stainless steel, carbon, fibre glass with oiled oak wood and felt oak wood is thought to blend state of the art technology and human touch.

STONE ISLAND - GLOBAL PRESENCE AND MARKETS

Stone island is distributed worldwide in the best multibrand boutiques and dept. stores and in a network of monobrand stores and corners. Currently, overall there are over 800 point of sales and the main markets are: Italy, Europe, Japan, Korea and US.