Modern Weekly – China

Modern Weekly – China – April 2015 Modern Weekly – China – April 2015 Modern Weekly – China – April 2015 Modern Weekly – China – April 2015 Modern Weekly – China – April 2015 Be stupid; Be Cool; Be Brave --A trio of DIESEL’s founder Renzo Rosso How does Renzo Rosso, the founder of DIESEL and the even larger fashion conglomerate OTB, keeps his fashion empire always young and fresh? In simple words, there is a trio of “fashion blindness” adopted by the bigwig: be stupid, be cool and be brave. Renzo appeared at DIESEL’s flagship store in Shanghai Kerry Center with a hotchpotch of accessories: a statement leather necklace with metal pendants, a pair of well fit jeans with sneakers on the end, and a maroon baseball jacket atop with rough curly hair. It’s hard to tell whether it was an old-school rock’n’roll star or a fashion magnate who builds the empire of OTB group that graced the store. He bent over and extended both his hands for greeting, and spoke with a passionate and strong Italian accent. In order to create a more diversified looks for Modern Weekly’s photo shooting, he spontaneously took off his tops and changed into a T-shirt casually grabbed from his store. After his tattoo- a Mohican head portrait, on the left shoulder came into exposure, he clenched his fist and showed off the tattoo on his finder, RR, the initials of his name. “The glass from DIESEL’s homeware collection looks full of mechanism doesn’t it?” as Renzo asked Weekly’s reporter, lifting a screw-like glass from the table. Like a giant bar, DIESEL’s planet store is not only filled with denim wear for both men and women, but also dotted with a variety of lifestyle products like shoes, watches, eyewear, jewelries and perfumes. With all of these, Renzo is building an ideal life prospect that every fashionista might be aspiring to. The interview was more of a store tour, with Renzo walking around the store with undisguised excitement. “This is our world largest and most beautiful store. It feels great to be on site for the first time. But as a Virgo who is always in pursuit of perfection, I want to improve some of the details,” said Renzo, occasionally stopping to check the rows of watches displayed in the store during his tour. Renzo is more than ready to tap into the Chinese market, hoping to appeal to the huge, rising crowd of the young, energetic and those interested in fashion in the country. Taking advantage of the occasion of Shanghai Fashion Week, Renzo made his trip to China this month. Starting from the denim brand DIESEL, Renzo has developed the group of Only The Brave (renamed as OTB since 2013) into a multi-brand fashion empire. He is one of the few in the industry who managed to take a brand from the LVMH group, and he started the acquisition from as early as in 2002. After acquiring Maison Martin Margiela, he also gradually made himself a shareholder of designer brands like Viktor&Rolf and Marni. Apart from that, the 1 Staff International, a branch company of OTB, is also in charge of manufacturing and distribution for Dsquared2, Just Cavalli, and Marc Jacobs Men. A rather “silly” fashion magnate, however, Renzo revealed that while making an investment, the impression that whether a brand is cool and stylish enough is often prioritized over its profitability. Smartness generates no success Be Stupid! is an ad campaign tailor-made for DIESEL by Renzo years ago. The most successful campaign features slogans like “smart people have brains, and the stupid have balls”, “Stupid may fail. Smart doesn't even try”. The slogans are both the life philosophy for Renzo and the business tips summarized in his biography. The emphases are being brave, challenging the normality and following one’s own instinct. “There is no such thing as a successful entrepreneur for me. I never do things for money. I am a stupid man from an Italian farm indulging in his own ‘stupid’ ideas. And it proves my stupidity is very valuable,” as Renzo put it, candidly, adding that he always follows his passion and instinct. As a matter of fact, he has already decoded the mechanism of the global retail market. The world is not made up of different tribes or nationalities, but a variety of communities with a sharing interest in music, sports and fashion. They may speak different languages, but they are buying the same things. Therefore, what he wants to create is a new world with a unique cultural identity. Like an outsider who accidentally broke into the world of fashion, Renzo has created a fashion empire defined by the style of rock’n’roll with denim and jeans. Different from many of other Italian brands established in cities like Florence, Milan and Rome and inspired by the rich and luxurious Italian style, the root of the fashion empire should be traced back to Renzo’s boyhood, a teenager who was crazy all over the American pop culture. Renzo was born in 1955 at a farm in north Italy’s Brugine town. There were only one automobile and two television sets in the whole town at his birth. In the vicinity of the town, however, there was an American military base, where he had his first encounter of the American culture, at the age of five. A group of American soldiers, arriving in a fancy Cadillac, stopped by at the farm by his house for picnic. The visit was as alien as from the moon, and the present from the soldiers for the five-year-old, a box of delicious pudding, tasted “just like the American dream”. The interest in everything new from America was thus piqued. James Dean, the teenage movie star who often played a role of the “beaten generation” on the screen, later became his idol. Even later, the rebellious lifestyle led by Dean was integrated as an important part of DNA of DIESEL. Renzo might be carefree and unrestrained by nature, but there was also an undeniably acute 2 sense of business born with him. And luckily, the hard work he toiled with his father on the farm in early years didn’t stifle his talent and desire for creativity. After given a piece of denim by his classmate, Renzo made his first jeans flares with his mother’s sewing machine at 15. The pant proved more than a hit among his classmates. He was encouraged to make more and sold them to his little clients at the price of five euro a pair. The casual success enlightened Renzo, making him to realize that fashion was a profitable business. After graduating from Marconi Technical Institute’s industrial textile manufacturing major, Renzo got employed by a denimwear company, Moltex founded by an Italian called Adriano Goldschmied at 20. Two years later, he purchased 40 percent of the company’s share through the financial help of his father. In 1978, with diesel becoming a popular energy, the duo branded their products after the vogue word. Renzo may not be a talented fashion designer, but he can always tell what would attract young people. His intention to bring changes to the denim market and to cater to the young fashion-oriented customers resulted in the idea of making vintage jeans. At 30, Renzo became the sole owner of DIESEL with 500,000 dollars and the Moltex share he had. The fresh new start, as the complete owner of DIESEL, was unsurprisingly difficult. During the first few years, he personally took a hand in the work, using stones and sandpaper to polish the denim in order to create the effect of vintage jeans. “Who would want to buy a pair of seemingly old jeans?” The idea caught up most people more than crazy when he delivered those vintage jeans to retailers for the first time. A pair of Ralph Lauren jeans, the most expensive of its kind, was priced around 50 dollars by then. But Renzo had the guts to charge 100 dollars for the cheapest pair of denim from DIESEL’s shelf. The retailers didn’t agreed to sell his denim until Renzo promised them that he would purchased all those back if no one bought them. It turned out Renzo knows young people. The denim were selling like hot cakes. On one hand, the unique technology used by DIESEL has kept the made-in-Italy fabric completely different from American denim, being unusually soft and flexible. More importantly, the denim wear not only speaks the language of American culture, but is also infused with a variety of fashion elements like the wild western style, or the bizarre gadgets from the second-hand shop. The adherence to price and craftsmanship also helps to explain the reason why Renzo could turn the once cheap work uniform into a sexy and stylish category of fashion items. Vintage denim have thus found a place in those luxury department stores from Log Angeles, Boston, Seattle and New York. Fueled by the same wildness and madness, the Italian farm man pioneered further into the global market. By the end of 1990’s, DIESEL had a sales network of more than 10,000 3 locations around the world, and the revenue reached 30 million dollars. Renzo later cut half of the sales points in order to focus more on the establishment of the brand’s own stores. In 1996, Renzo opened DIESEL’s first flagship store in US. Located on Lexington Avenue in New York, the store is right opposite the store of Levi’s, its competitor.

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