A FASHIONABLE COMPANYOn December 18th the Fall/Winter 2016 collection was presented to employees. Meanwhile it turns out that Benetton is one of the most sought brands by the users of Linkedin.

PEOPLE

COURAGE AND ENERGY: JUST LIKE ME!

Skin is the new face of Sisley. She talked to Knit about music, fashion and team play. And she explained why she chose to tie her name to our brand: «It represents me, it allows me to be myself. On stage and in life».

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ALL THE COLORS OF THE WORLDToday’s society, which is increasingly open to new influences, is a mix of cultures. Benetton celebrates this with a global communication campaign, Face of the City, and a new collection, Carnival.

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WE COMMUNICATE OUR DNA

IDENTITY

Born from an intuition within the company and developed by designer Franco Giacometti, our “knitting stitch” logo has accompanied us for the last 50 years.

NUMBER 1 • FEBRUARY 2016

KNIT MET BENETTON GROUP’S CEO, WHO SPOKE ABOUT HOW 2015 WENT AND LAID OUT THE CHALLENGES THAT WE WILL HAVE TO FACE IN 2016

MARCO AIROLDI

THE YEAR AHEAD

VOICES

The number of stores is growing and the network is set to expand again. Moreover, the Fall/Winter 2015 collection has been received well by the public. The new path that Benetton has set upon - becoming more and more product oriented - is starting to bear fruit

T he secret to success lies (also) in the ability to interpret the signals. The vastly positive feedback

received by Benetton and Sisley in 2015 leaves us feeling optimistic about the future.

Renovation operationAs highlighted by Marco Airoldi and Marco Messini during the presentation of the Fall/Winter 2016 line, the numbers reveal a continuously evolving universe: the network has reached 500 stores including new openings and restylings; the retail channel UCB is growing (+10%) as is the network of franchise stores in Italy (+6%), the main

BACK TO THE FUTURE

market. In parallel, the On Canvas concept - which pays homage to the roots of the brand by combining textile traditions with innovation -

continues to expand successfully: 132 new openings are scheduled for 2016, some in prestigious places such as Madrid, Venice and Capri.

One can hardly imagine a more appealing location for the new

Sisley store in Paris: in the heart of the French capital, close to Place de l’Opéra and Notre Dame Cathedral. 70 square metres dedicated exclusively to women: inside the store everything – from the building to the panelling – enhances the Rich&Raw concept, a perfect mix of cosmopolitan fashion and tradition. The new store also marks a “homecoming” of sorts for the R&R design: the concept is in fact inspired by The Dreamers, a movie by the most French of the Italian directors, Bernardo Bertolucci, shot precisely in Paris.

THE FRENCH (STYLE) REVOLUTIONA new store entirely dedicated to women opened in the heart of Paris

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Meanwhile UCB collections continue to find favour with the public, which has made the success of the F/W 2015 line possible (+10% on the previous year). This is also why there is an air of confidence around the 2016 collection, presented to the commercial network and to employees at the end of last year. The reception confirms the validity of the new brand strategy, which calls for positioning the company more on knitwear and our historical know-how than on brand distribution. For Benetton, the new course has already begun.

AREZZO (Italy) C.C. Setteponti (B+S)BARI (Italy) Corso Cavour 112 (B)BHARUCH (India) Shop N°12, Upper Gr, Sethna Plaza (B)BRESSANONE (Italy) Via Roma 1 (B)CATANIA (Italy) Viale della Libertà 196 (B)CESENA (Italy) Corso Sozzi 29 (B)ENFIELD (UK) 11-14 The Town (B)GUWAHATI (India) Central Mall, G/F, G.s. Road (B) GUWAHATI (India) Central Mall, G.s. Road (B) L’AQUILA (Italy) C.C. Meridiana (B)MOSCOW (Russia) Outlet Village Block 152 - 153 (B+S)MOSCOW (Russia) TC Mega Accom 6058 (B+S)NARDO’ (Italy) Via Grassi 13 (B)NEW DELHI (India) Shoppers Stop, Metro Station (B)PARIS (France) 65 Rue Montmartre/71 Rue d'Argout (S)POLIGNANO A MARE (Italy) Via Martiri di Dogali 33/A (B)POPRAD (Slovakia) C.C. Forum (B)ROMA (Italy) Piazza Buenos Aires 15-16 (B)S. BENEDETTO DEL TRONTO (Italy) C.C. Porto Grande (B)TAIPEI (Taiwan) Mitsukoshi Hsinying A11 (S)TAIPEI (Taiwan) Mitsukoshi, Hsinying Tower A11 (B)THRISSUR (India) Sobha Mall, Vi 1A, Puzhakkal (B)UDAIPUR (India) Celebration Mall (B)VIPITENO (Italy) Via Città Vecchia 11 (B)WIESLOCH (Germany) Haupstrasse 70 (B)WIESLOCH (Germany) Haupstrasse 85 (B)YAKUTSK (Russia) Amosova 6A (B+S)ZAGREB (Croatia) Mercator Shop Ctr (B+S)

DECEMBER 2015OPENINGS UCB (B) AND SISLEY (S)

Pages 2 and 3, pictures of some of the most important store openings of 2015: 1 and 5 Lisbon, 2 Mexico City, 3 Milan (corso Vittorio Emanuele II), 4 Treviso, 6 Palermo, 7 Puebla.

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TOTAL OPENINGS 2015STORES 159RESTYLING 72DEPARTMENT 232SHOP-IN-SHOP 39

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STORE

Society is becoming increasingly diverse and open to influences. Benetton celebrates it with a global campaign and a capsule collection

Today the world truly is a melting pot, but not always in the way one would expect: in New York city

blacks and Latinos make up about half the population while in Paris only 5 per cent of foreigners are of African origin. This diversification phenomenon was long envisioned by Benetton and today is celebrated through two major initiatives planned for 2016.

Every city has its own faceThe first is the advertising campaign by United Colors of Benetton, which promises to be ambitious starting from its name. Face of the City seeks to create a "face" for each of the six major fashion capitals (London, Tokyo, New York, Milan, Berlin and Paris). A real face, capable of synthesising the ethnic mix present in each of the metropolises; a well thought-out operation, preceded by complex research that has determined the exact composition of the population of each city - a result achieved through cross checking data and statistics of

creates new, unexpected beauty standards.

One collection, many coloursThe Carnival line is a celebration of colour in all its shades, a demonstration of what happens when fashion embraces different influences. Third in a series of capsule collections planned for 2016 - with a top a boxes, mini dresses, pea coats, A-line skirts, cropped pants, shirt dresses and more - Carnival makes good use of the latest knitwear technologies to unite several colour palettes in the same garment and to create evocative results. Available from February in selected stores around the world, Carnival is not just a collection, but a genuine vision of the world, as is the custom for United Colors of Benetton.

THE NEW FACE OF THE WORLD

international demographic reports and censuses of the six cities.

Sum of the differencesThe next step was the shooting with a group of women whose faces could best represent the melting pot of every city. The shots were then digitally processed with an algorithm to ensure that all ethnic groups were proportionally represented by the colour of skin, hair, the shape of the eyes and nose. Result? Six faces which are able to represent a world in which diversity

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BRAND

She’s the voice (and unmistakable face!) of Skunk Anansie. We met her to talk about Sisley, music and how it is like working in a team

« I am the living definition of “originality”». This is how Skin answered us when we asked her the reasons behind her

collaboration with Sisley. And looking at her career it is hard to disagree: an escalation of successes that saw her become one of the most talented stars in the rock world. But, she assures, a band is not so different from any other work group.

Why Sisley? What do you appreciate the most of its style?«Its courage. I am a very particular character, very “wild”, and I like to think that a fashion brand can represent one like me. Another thing that draws me to Sisley is the energy: my job, rock, is all about energy, movement. To be myself both on stage and in life is fundamental to me and I found a brand that lets me be myself».

again after a big failure? «There have been lots of low points. The biggest one was the band’s split (2001-2009, Ed.), an unexpected event, but getting back together was probably the most fun I’ve had in a long time. This made me realize that failure is part of the game and that what matters is being able to go beyond it. It’s not easy, but this makes your artistic personality stronger».

In X-Factor you worked with very young artists: what is the most important thing you tried to pass on to them?«From the very beginning I tried to help the girls on my team understand that the first thing to do in that context was learn, not win. For the rest of their lives they will never be in a situation like that again, they will never have the full support of a TV show, so the best thing for them was to take as much as they could from that experience. The other thing I tried to help them with was self-confidence: if you are confident in your means at that age you can go anywhere».

Your X-Factor experience required you to learn a new language and a new job. How do you remain open and curious?«I think the secret is keeping a positive attitude towards other people. If you think that other people are interesting, you can learn a lot also from a single conversation. Building a pleasant atmosphere at work, listening to people at your side and being humble: these are my tricks to keeping a state of mind open to new things».

SKIN: ROCK IS A TEAM PLAY

What are the most stimulating aspects of being part of a band full of strong personalities?«I think it is fundamental that all the members of the band feel themselves important at the same level. If they also are very good friends, like I am with the other Skunk Anansie band members, artistic discussions become really stimulating. When I worked as a solo artist I was free to take the final decisions, but often I couldn’t get an honest opinion on what I had done, I missed the exchange of ideas I was used to before. The cooperation among artists is a challenge, sometimes a clash, but it is necessary to keep a constructive attitude if you want to go down the right path».

Yours is a career full of successes. Were there any low points? And how do you start up

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BRAND

The new store format, the collections, a clear brand strategy, investment and training. And the financial results start to show. We talked about the tasks achieved (and about the name Knit) with the CEO of the Benetton Group

“ The Year of Living Dangerously” is the title of a 1982 film by director Peter Weir. “The Year of Living intensely” could be

the remake made in Ponzano (and nearby). For the Benetton Group, 2015 was full of changes across all aspects of company life, from governance, products, to the shops and people. And now? At what point are we? What are the goals for 2016? To take stock of our company, we had a long talk with chief executive Marco Airoldi.

Let’s start by looking at last year. We worked on many fronts: in your eyes, of all the things achieved, which one was the most important?«To be brief, I’ll choose three. First, the brand strategy. Today, we know full well who we are and what our positioning is, as summarized in the formula “colour, knitwear, social responsibility”. Second, excellence

inside the store. We worked hard on our sales points, by fine tuning the On Canvas format, and we can now say that it works. Third, the people. I’m not only talking about the various changes within the management team, which is also a sign of great confidence in the future, but also the start of a training program that will reach across all levels of the company. However, I want to reiterate, there is no single business function, or even a single individual, which is excluded from this process of change. Our company is a single interconnected body and all parts collaborate together, even when it’s less apparent. Without good management, we can’t have effective marketing; without effective logistics, we lose credibility in the eyes of our customers and end users. And so on».

But can you see the results? How is the company doing?«It’s doing better. Like for like, in other

words excluding new store openings and closures, worldwide sales increased 7 percent. And if we look at the shops adopting the On Canvas format, there is an average growth of 20 percent. This tells us that we’re now on the right path, and we should follow it with conviction».

And what main challenges lie ahead in the new year?«There is a lot of work to do. The first goal is simplicity: our headquarters needs to become a streamlined and easy to use service centre for a network of shops. Then of course there is growth: we must apply the best practices we have developed across the whole network of stores, in all countries, adapting them intelligently to different situations. And we have a surefire formula to carry this out: collaboration between the company and its partners. When we did it well, we always came out on top».

PEOPLE ARE THE THREAD THE TEAM IS THE FABRIC

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VOICES

And in practice?«In practice, the network of directly operated stores has allowed us to develop a new format in a short time, testing and fine tuning it, by investing directly. We now know that it works and increases sales. We also know that our commercial partners are crucial for implementing this model on a wider scale. This partnership has always been the key to Benetton’s success».

Let’s try and broaden our outlook. Where do you see us in five years? «We are a company that has restructured, a company that has started to grow again and wants to grow further, also through an ambitious investment plan. How? In a healthy and profitable manner for us and our partners, with great attention to costs and efficiency, and with a focus on those markets where we are well established, - like Italy, Europe and India - and on developing new ones».

We have mentioned the brand strategy. But what does it mean to be a brand, beyond the product? «It means reflecting on every feature, placing the end consumer at the centre of our thinking, talking to them always in the same way with same language. A brand is a brand, wherever you encounter it and whatever the means by which it communicates. Our new approach, with the four “capsule collections” is a guarantee that this will happen».

So far, we have talked a lot about United Colors of Benetton. What is the state of the art in regards to Sisley?«As far as our approach is concerned, everything we’ve said so far can also be applied to Sisley. Sisley is one of two brands of the group and is doing well. The communication operations

carried out, with Fedez first and now with Skin, show that the Sisley brand is extremely important and we’re constantly investing in its visibility».

The major changes taking place are only possible thanks to the efforts of people working in the Benetton Group. «That’s true. This is why I would like to thank everyone whole-heartedly. I know we’ve done many things that sometimes seemed impossible, and moreover we did them at great speed, at times with some difficulty. But it was worth doing them, as I think it’s been understood, because the considerable work carried out makes our business stronger and better equipped to compete».

A message for 2016?«I would use just two words: responsibility and collaboration. Responsibility because the company, as we said, is doing everything possible to create the conditions for success: strategy, investments, products and training. Now, it’s up to each of us to do our bit, no excuses. The result can’t depend on anyone else, we have all the equipment needed. And collaboration because, needless to say, we are much stronger together. It reminds me of the French women’s team that wins the 4x100 relay world final even though their individual times are lower than those of the American athletes: are they

stronger? Certainly they are better at working together. And they win».

This has to do with the newsletter, inaugurated with this interview, as an evolution of the project launched in 2015. Why the name Knit?«It is very appropriate. The term Knit evokes two values: on the one hand the knitwear product, which remains and will continue to be the heart of our strategy. On the other hand, the concept of "uniting", which is another meaning of the verb "to knit". What fascinates me about knitting is just that, stitch after stitch, the yarn turns into fabric. In doing so, it becomes more beautiful, more durable, more elastic. That’s it: people are the thread, the team is the fabric».

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VOICES

The presentation of the UCB Fall/Winter 2016 collection was the first communication event dedicated to all employees worldwide

Over the past few years, our company has faced some important changes:

in the governance model, in the business approach, in the new consumer oriented vision. We have also changed the way we think about ourselves: we are a single organization that, from its core, develops multinational experiences. There was a feeling of urgency, of a need to broaden the company’s horizons, of opportunity to grow both in human and professional terms while making us finally feel like we were an active part of a multicountry, multiculture and multiexperience whole which was “easily” achievable, within reach. After all, our company was born from an idea that was free from geographic, cultural and linguistic limits. We are United Colors of Benetton and our brand binds the Italian character to the rest of the world. So the transition was natural and an answer to a hidden need that led the HR community to

its new design, starting from next month will reach all foreign countries and we will have the big opportunity to involve and share information and important news with the entire international community.On December 18th, for the first time, an important internal communication event was organized and streamed live, worldwide. During this event our Ceo Marco Airoldi - together with John Mollanger, Chief Product & Marketing Officer, and Marco Messini, Chief Distribution & Sales Officer - presented and shared with everyone the company’s brand/product’s and sales strategies. It was the first internal communication event specifically dedicated to all our colleagues in the world.The launch of Knit is the occasion to concretely reiterate our international vocation and our firm will to be and act “All in One”.

meet in November 2014 at the first world Town Hall. There we had the chance to get to know each other as professionals and as individuals, to share experiences, projects and visions. The most obvious thing was how the global breadth of these kinds of events automatically generates rich/stimulating content.

A global visionSince then we finally started thinking that “All in One” should be more than a mere slogan tied to that one, single experience. It should completely transform our way of thinking about to the company and its people. Our company is much more than its headquarters: it is made up of all the people working for it in Italy, in all the countries where we are present, in offices, and especially in stores. It is with this increasingly wide and global Vision that we want to develop and launch all our engagement and internal communication initiatives.That is why our intranet, besides

LINKEDIN, THE SOCIAL NETWORK FOR PROFESSIONALS, RANKS BENETTON GROUP AMONG THE BRANDS MOST “DESIRED” BY USERS

THE WINNING COMPANYAWARDS

A few weeks ago Benetton Group was listed by LinkedIn Italia, the best-known professional social network, in the ranking of the 50 companies most sought after by users - evidence that our Group is increasingly visible and esteemed. The Customer InDemand 2015 ranking, which places our brand in 27th position among the most desired employers (before brands of excellence such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft and Siemens), is not based on questionnaires or statements from users, but rather the

actual online behaviour of professionals. It analyses parameters such as engagement levels, interaction with jobs posted and number of people reached with online activities. Therefore, it is a reliable ranking, confirming the validity of the employer branding operations carried out during 2015, which were aimed at recruiting young talent.

THE FUTURE ON THE RUNWAY

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PEOPLE

Born from an intuition within the company and developed by designer Franco Giacometti, our logo has set us apart for the last 50 years

T he perfect logo, say marketing experts, is one that requires no explanation: just a look, even fleeting, and anyone who sees it immediately recognises which company it belongs to. This rule is also valid

for the “knitting stitch” symbol of Benetton, the tangle of wires that for the past 50 years has appeared next to the name of the group in the official trademark.

A question of branding To discover the origins of the Benetton trademark requires taking a trip back in time, to 1966, when - as evidenced by the historical documents of the Benetton archive - the company abandoned the name Très Jolie in order to appeal directly to the family name, a step taken prior tothe marketing of its textile products. Soon the Benetton siblings felt the need for a trademark that was easily recognisable by the public. A team within the company, in cooperation with the firm Formica from Treviso, started working and soon came up Maglierie Benetton (Benetton Knitwear factory). But one problem still remained: what logo to use together with the trademark name? This issue was solved thanks to a brilliant intuition

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within the company: adopt the “knitting stitches“ seen in the Textiller magazine.

A stitch “on a human scale�The idea was picked up and developed by a young designer from Treviso, Franco Giacometti, who quickly came up with the first version of the logo that today everyone knows: a white round stitch atop a tangle of wires on a green background, which suggests the image of a stylised human figure. The Benetton siblings immediately approved the design and while other elements of the brand - text and graphics - underwent several changes over the decades, the “stitch” still remains almost unchanged (except for a makeover in the mid 90’s in order to obtain a more precise geometry). And it is certainly one of the things that has made United Colors of Benetton a recognised brand all over the world.

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