Living la Vita Dolce & Gabbana
By Marion Hume Tuesday, Nov. 29, 2005
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The only person with a financial background in the core corporate lineup is the one without the family name. Cristiana Ruella rarely invites media scrutiny, even though she looks like an Italian Demi Moore. An economist by training, she was working as a commerciale (an accountant-lawyer) when she met the pair she still calls “Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana” to discuss their finances.
Despite Ruella's having little interest in fashion when she was asked to join the burgeoning business in 1991, she took a leap of faith, “not because of zebra and leopard prints,” she laughs, referring to the prints that reappear in almost all their interiors and their work spaces, “but because of the possibility of the numbers.”THERE HAVE BEEN big decisions of late, born of the need to nail down a fast-growing corporate structure for the next 20 years or more. In business terms, the problem inherent in designer brands is, of course, the designers themselves and how the brands they have founded might continue in their absence. Dolce & Gabbana's glossy annual report addresses that. “Our plans for the future?” the designers are quoted as asking. “To carry on working with the same commitment and determination so that our brand continues to grow and expand and, perhaps, in the very distant future, to go on without us. In the early years, our dream was … to keep the brand going from one season to the next … The goal has changed: we want our brand to live forever.”
With their recent numbers, chances are very good that it will. Dolce & Gabbana leather-accessories and footwear sales rose 35% from March 2004 to March 2005, for example. “I'm surprised people are so surprised,” Ruella says. “To me [the impressive year-on-year rises] are quite normal. We grew in our own way. Perhaps the hard part, the fashion, we already did, and now we have to exploit the easier part. What is sure, we prefer to follow our own street.”
That “street”—one not without risk—has led to the expansion of wholly owned factories (now completed) and the decision to recall all licenses (except those of fragrance, opticals and watches), including one for the highly lucrative D&G line, which currently generates more than $536 million and will be produced in-house starting in 2007.
The big talk in fashion now is the Chi nese market, and here, too, Dolce & Gabbana is doing things its way—without a local partner and with vast shops in the tourist destination of Hangzhou as well as in Beijing and Shanghai.
“We feel we can't leave such a market in other hands,” says Ruella. In any case, she adds, the Italians and the Chinese are made to do business together. “Both can have a dinner and speak about everything else without losing for a second why we are there.”
Ruella doesn't see success in terms of dreams. To this pragmatist, the reasons for success are straightforward. “The secret of this company is no secret,” she says. “Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana provide clothes for lots of women to wear. Yes, we must manage a big company with prudence, but we never speak about ‘if we do this, we will find more customers.’ Customers want to find what Mr. Dolce and Mr. Gabbana design.”Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1135652-3,00.html#ixzz0YeUjGg9M
Dolce & Gabbana will live on forever I hope. It is a leading luxury brand and that does not seem to be changing any time soon. I support their common goal to carry on the brand and have it continue to expand and grow for the better. I can not wait to see what their future holds!
