Sportswear Company Sportswear Company an Introduction

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 wool 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 dyeing 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.

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