What do you think of Zegna’s I.P.O. Path? Is it the next big fashion trend? One way that Zegna and Prada worked together this year was to each buy 40% of the cashmere producer Filati Biagioli Modesto, and Mr. Zegna said that Zegna might use the proceeds from its IPO to invest even more in Italian textiles.
Control over production also ensures traceability and sustainability, which are becoming more important to the younger customers Zegna wants to attract. One of the most famous things about the brand is Oasi Zegna, a huge park in Trivero, Piedmont, Italy. It was built by Zegna’s founder to protect the local ecosystem, which is 30 times bigger than New York’s Central Park (as the company boasts in the investor deck it prepared for the SPAC). During the interview, Mr. Zegna talked about his recycled sneakers and how the brand now has a programme to use the scraps of fabric that are left on the cutting room floor so that they don’t go to waste.
As a public company, Zegna will have to compete with the French companies that have been buying up the world’s best-known brands for years. Even tho Zegna’s has good quality and a good supply chain, it will have to compete with the French companies. With more than 75 brands, LVMH Moet Hennessy Louis Vuitton now has a market value of almost $400 billion. It’s worth almost $100 billion to Kering, the owner of brands like Gucci and Saint Laurent, because they make clothes.
In part, Mr. Zegna said, “We did what we did because of how big we are.” We want to grow in size. Don’t ask me how big that would be, but it’s sure to be bigger than now.
He didn’t want to talk about what Zegna might do in the future. In 2018, the company bought the New York fashion label Thom Browne, whose shrunken suits and ironic interpretations of preppyness have made it popular with a younger group of customers than the core Zegna customers. Children’s clothes have been a big part of the brand since it became part of Zegna. South Korea and China are big markets for the brand, and Mr. Zegna said there are plans for more growth. Mr. Browne, the brand’s creative head, and Rodrigo Bazan, its CEO, joined Mr. Zegna to ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Monday.
In 2020, Zegna collaborated with Fear of God, a high-end American streetwear brand. This collaboration also made Zegna more cool, and Mr. Zegna said there were more limited-edition collections in the works, as well.
