Seducing the younger clientele is becoming increasingly important for the fashion system, even if your name is Off-White or Palm Angels
According to a recent study carried out by Ambrosetti and presented on 21 October, during the first day of the Milan Fashion Global Summit, in fact, the target consumer of the fashion and luxury sector today is “young, hyperconnected and for the Asian majority”. day of the summit, three international brands, Off-White, Ganni and Palm Angels told their strategies to conquer millennials and Generation Z.
Andrea Grilli, CEO di Off-White
“Off-White was born in 2013 from a creative idea of Virgil Abloh, who immediately chose very strong stylistic codes and graphics, which allowed the brand to become quickly recognizable, with iconic products appreciated especially by the very young”, has explained Andrea Grilli, CEO of Off-White. “Generation Z is very fast, we have adapted to this speed. Today the brand’s success is linked above all to the men’s offer, but we expect that by 2020 women’s sales will match those of men. Furthermore, the agreement with Farfetch (which last summer acquired the Milan-based group NGG, which owns the brand, ed) will allow us to significantly develop our online business “.
As for Ganni, the Danish fashion brand founded in Copenhagen in 2009 when a married couple decided to acquire a small knitwear brand to make it a global brand, CEO Andrea Baldo reveals: “The two founders have divided roles based on their skills: his wife, who is a merchandiser and buyer, observes what happens in the city in everyday life to interpret it in the collections, while her husband, an entrepreneur in the digital field, is in charge of positioning the brand making the most of the potential of the online “. The result is a proposal that combines Scandinavian minimalism with the typical bohemian spirit of Copenhagen, focusing on sustainability, for a wearable streetwear collection at any time of the day and in any situation. Today for Ganni the direct to consumer channel represents 30% of the total turnover.
And Francesco Ragazzi, founder of the Palm Angels brand, also talks about streetwear, telling the Milan Fashion Global Summit audience how he came to create his own brand: “Initially I wanted to be a fashion photographer, but 12 years ago, tired of waiting for the right occasion, I started an internship with Moncler as a press officer. It wasn’t my way, but I was in the right place at the right time: Remo Ruffini believed in me and over time I managed to become Artistic Director “.
But convict was a trip to Los Angeles, during which Ragazzi took up the camera and portrayed the style and culture of the Los Angeles skater community; from these shots a book was born, published by Rizzoli in 2014, with a preface by Pharrell Williams.
Francesco Ragazzi, fondatore di Palm Angels
“The idea of a fashion project was born from the book and I founded Palm Angels. Today the brand is distributed in 51 countries, in 260 wholesale stores and 7 monobrand stores in the world. In Asia we are in Hong Kong, Shanghai and Beijing, we are now in London and we are moving to the United States, where in 2020 we should inaugurate a boutique, “continues Ragazzi. “We want to grow a lot in e-commerce; for us the social activity was fundamental, in fact we invented a company through a mobile phone. I personally manage the Palm Angels Instagram account because I want to convey the brand’s value and DNA “.
Federica Levato, Partner Bain & Co, also commented on millennials and Generation Z: “We live in a time of great demographic complexity (…) in which there are five generations of active consumers in the world, from the silent generation (born before 1945) to generation Z (born after 1995), all with specific characteristics and expectations. (…) Those born between 1980 and 1995 were the first to be exposed to digital technologies, they have a greater awareness of consumption and an expectation in the level of service and engagement that is much greater than in the past. Finally, the Y and Z generations, which will generate 150% of the market growth in the next 15 years, are those that are changing the rules of the game and the classic paradigms of fashion and luxury with behaviors, attitudes and expectations that the brands are starting to only to know now “.
