Part 1 of 5: Ermenegildo Zegna and Tania Bryer – AH / JW3 Speaker Series

Good question. First of all, thank you Alan for inviting me. It's a great honor to be here in your foundation and to be in front of what I understand are some young people, which is going to be interesting and talk to young people about. Going back to your question, I think that we are a masculine brand with a strong heritage to do things well, good quality, starting with textile 105 years ago and then going to retailing around the world with a pioneering spirit. I think that my grandfather in particular, Zegna, who is the one who created the brand, was an incredible visionary and a man of great pride with great ambition that liked his land. I think that he got a lot from his land and from his people and he gave a lot back. So I think it's a mix of values, unity, a strong united family with an ambition to go forward, working well in the territory and with a strong team spirit. I think that's what makes us different in an industry which is evolving very fast and in a world that is changing very fast.

Well, first of all, he's very international. He's a globetrotter, you know, he lives in Paris, Johannesburg, New York, and I think that he has several residences, so we make sure to fit him well around the world. I would say it's a man that is quite understated, more the being than the having, very sure of himself, he knows what he wants. He has very little time to shop, so you have to be very accurate in service, very detail-driven, he knows what he wants. And I think you have to make sure he comes back, which is the biggest challenge today. I think he's going more and more into the digital world, and so we are working very hard to be less traditional in that part of the business and going more with additional services. But I think that he does appreciate our qualities and our service content throughout the network of stores around the world, because I think one of the challenges that I had is to move from an industry to a product-oriented company and from a product-oriented company to a retail-oriented company, and so moving gradually from a wholesale business into a retail business in order to be closer to the customer. And I think the challenge today is to retain the good customer and to get new customer in a world that is very competitive and that presents bigger and bigger challenges.

I think he had a dream to get his brand across the world. And I think that the British in those days were really iconic in textiles. So his ambition, his vision was to make sure, you know, we go—I have to be careful what I say, I'm in Britain. That's right, they'll forgive you. So the challenge was to emulate the quality in textile of the British with a touch of Italian styling, creativity, by getting the brand across. And so he started by doing that first of all in Italy. And you know, in those days there were more trains than cars, so he started advertising his red seal that you saw, we call it the 'red thread,' it's a seal that every yard of fabric has, you know, and so making sure that that went to the tailor and so the final customer recognize the differences between his cloth and the other cloth. So that was his starting point. He went to the States, believe it or not, in the 30s, because there were a lot of Italian tailors in the States, and so they already knew the product, and so he used them as an introduction to the American market. Didn't you tempt them with wonderful Neapolitan meals? Didn't he have to persuade them? Yeah, yeah, quite so. And so that's how he started. And then he started creating some operations around Europe, you know, to Germany, to Spain, and that's how he started. But on a parallel route, what he did, he had a great respect for his territory, so he felt that he had to become social, what we call a social patronage, in order to give to the people in the territory something better lifestyle, better possibility to live. And so he created this beautiful Oasi Zegna, used to have another name, we call it Oasi Zegna, it's a beautiful green territory with the Zegna village, with a beautiful road with a lot of flowers from rhododendrons to pines that in a way is rainforest regeneration of the territory. And I think this is how he really got started, a philanthropic man that wanted to share what he made with the people working in the factory.

Yeah, Angelo is my great-grandfather. I mean, he got into the picture at the end of the 1800s, and that's how we went into the watch business. I mean, we were very small collection, we partner with Jaeger-LeCoultre, maker, and we create limited edition watches in order to go back to their memories. And at the age of 40, he left that job and he decided to go into textiles, so with four looms that was taken by my grandfather and he went bigger and creating his own brand with more creative fabrics because he was a designer. He went to design school and he actually knew how to create a fabric in the structure and in the design, and so I mean, he was quite an innovator not only in the manufacturing but also on the product. It was then the following generation that in a world in which the tailor were declining, my father and my uncle decided to go closer to the customer with more clothing industry. And as a matter of fact, again the emulation came from the British, from the more mature part of the audience. Chester Barrie used to be a very well-known clothing brand, and again my father had a dream and said I want to create a Chester Barrie of Italy, very well-made product, suits with a lot of handwork, but utilizing our fabrics that were lighter weight, so it was an introduction to the fast travel retail today. I mean, you see, until yesterday were we in winter or were we in spring? Yeah. And so I think it's getting a more and more transitional weather, and so you need really clothes and clothing that are good for the man who travels the world. So in a way, it was a little bit an anticipation. I think it's a pioneering spirit to create a more comfortable, lighter weight product, good for travel. And today, it's probably one of the iconic suits we have is called High Performance Traveler, in a way going back again 10, 20, 30 years and making these suits or this product available from the Chinese to the Russian, you know, to the American, to the Japanese traveling in the world.

I think that the values and the roots are very important. I always like to say to my children, and Edo is here, it's my son that lives in London, is head of the M-Channel, fill your roots and come back to your roots. And I think that Trivero is still the place where we gather twice a year, the entire family, four generations together, and to breathe the air of the good old years. So I think that these values are very important to all of us. The second thing is love what you do regardless of where you stay in our business or do something else. I think that that makes somebody accomplishing something. The third thing is respect the people you work with, because you know, people are here and they're gone if you don't treat them well or if they don't feel a sense of belonging to the company. And so I think that this sense of integrity is very important to us, caring for the people. And one thing, I mean, I'm very proud to say that we employ people second, third generation, it's unbelievable. And sometimes maybe we are too loyal to them or they are too loyal to us, and so I think that sometimes it gets a little bit tricky because it becomes hard to change. But I mean, the sense of belonging for us is very important, belonging to the Zegna community whether you're in New York, whether you're in Beijing or whether you're in Trivero. And we have a senior school which we train about 1,000 offspring every year around the globe. We bring them to Italy, we get them to breathe our air, you know, from as I said from sheep farm in Australia to store in New Zealand, because we have a store in New Zealand too, believe it or not. And so they go to the factory, they see what we are doing, and then they become, they bring the gospel as we say it around the world. And I think the customer likes to hear the story, and that makes a difference between our brand and other brands because the heritage and this authenticity is what the new economy, like in the old days of Japan, today China, tomorrow is hopefully is India one day. I'm still hope that India can become an important luxury market. But I think this is the type of values that we try to get transferred to the next generation and to the young employees that work for us.

I think he was an austere person. He—I'm a bigger talker than he was. He said few words but very concise, very much to the point. He was a good listener, that's very important too, and I think he was a good preacher. But we lost him when I was young, I was 14. And I remember that you know, it was me, my sister, and my cousin, and so he invited us to read the newspaper in his home, and he was checking who was reading the paper, and then he was asking, okay, what did you read? So that was the way to get to know us better. And so surely it was a very disciplined approach, but I think in education, a good approach into education. So to answer your question: vision, ambition, and discipline. Discipline and stick to the family roots.

Well, pressure, you know, I think that is you create your own pressure. I don't think that you can be pushed too far, otherwise you get opposite result. I was given a chance, first of all, I was given the chance to study abroad. I did my A-levels in this beautiful city, I got a bachelor degree here, and then I start going around, you know, the States in particular, China. And I think it came as a natural, and I think you have to feel it, you know. And I think that the summer stages were important, from American retailer to German manufacturer. I worked at Hugo Boss, you know, it's a great competitor of us, and so in the old days when he was still private, I was able to work for them for six months. I worked for Bloomingdale's, you know, Marvin Traub, it's a fantastic educator in retail. Did you learn a lot from him for your two years? Not from him, because I was, you know, fifth grade, I mean he was the chairman, so I was a junior buyer, so okay, but I had a chance, you know, to meet him the first day and the last day when I—that was it, sorry. But he was impressive, but I read a lot about him, and I think he was talking to the employees a lot. And then when he became consultant and he created his own company, you know, we stayed in touch, then unfortunately he passed away two years ago, but a fantastic merchant. That used the word they used to call the American retailer, now they're more financial than the merchant, and so these were the days in which he invented what creative merchandising is about. Which, you know, merchandising when you talk about merchandising in Europe, we say what are you talking about, we don't understand, it was a or it was an anathema. Now a merchandise is one of the most important position in our field. Yeah. Unless you have good merchandising, you're not a good retailer because you don't know what the right offer to the customer. And so I mean, these are some of the little things I learned and I try to put them in practice once I grew up and once I pushed the retail business.

Yeah, probably in the States. In the States, it was 19—what year was that? 19, early 80s, in which we had a vacuum in the company, and so my father said, are you ready? I said, I hope. Jump into the pool and then swim, and he was on the other side of the ocean, and I think he was my chance. And I married my lovely wife Elena, she came from Italy to the States, and we had Edo two years after, and Edo is, you know, an American citizen, so that's how the old things started. Then we lived there for a good number of years, and then we moved back to Europe to run the business. So I've been back and forth. I've been going more in the old days more West, okay, now I'm going more East.