Giorgio Armani started the company in 1975. It is a privately held company with the founder Giorgio Armani being the sole shareholder. With many sub-brands designed under the parent umbrella brand of Giorgio Armani to cater to the specific needs of different market segments, it has become one of the strongest fashion and luxury brands in the world.
Giorgio Armani is very expansive in Asia Pacific with its multiple future growth markets for luxury brands. For example, China is embracing premium fashion and luxury goods at an increasing pace, and Giorgio Armani has been one of the forerunners to exploit the market potential. There are approximately around 10 to 13 million Chinese luxury brand customers. Giorgio Armani opened its Emporio Armani store next to Shanghai’s historic “The Bund” in 2004 and has been opening stores across China since then.
The Giorgio Armani fashion house, like many other fashion houses, has been built primarily on the unique personality and identity of Giorgio Armani himself. The brand takes on the identity of the founder through the designs created.
Though this aspect of the fashion industry provides fashion houses with a strong sense of differentiation that can be conveyed in a tangible and visual form, it also poses a serious threat. When an entire brand and fashion house is built on the basis of the founders’ personality and identity, it becomes a major challenge to keep the brand going after the demise of the founder, something many of the fashion houses have realised in the recent past.
The Giorgio Armani Brand Architecture
Whenever a brand gains popularity and acceptance from its target customers in its core business, the next obvious step for the brand is to charter a new course by venturing into different product lines, different segments, and ever different markets.
Giorgio Armani with its iconic popularity amongst the elite of the society and the fashion literate segment of the market has followed similar steps by extending the brand. Today the Armani brand architecture encompasses one corporate brand and five sub-brands, each catering to different sets of target customers and at different price levels.
The signature Giorgio Armani line: This is the main collection of apparel that consists of the signature Armani suits, Oscar gowns and so on, which are of the ultra-premium price points and essentially targeting consumers in the 35-50 year old age group.
Armani Collezioni: This is Armani’s venture into a slightly lower market segment. This basically caters to the segment of people who aspire to wear Armani apparel but cannot afford the ultimate signature line, or to those who crave to add extra products to their existing portfolios. The Armani Collezioni brand, with a price point of almost 20% lower than the main line, provides an excellent line of affordable fashion.
Emporio Armani: Targeted especially at the young professional segment in the 25-35 year old age group, the Emporio Armani brand provides contemporary designs that are relevant to the target customers.
Armani Jeans: This is the lowest range of Armani apparel. This is to the value segment what the signature line is to the premium segment. Catering necessarily to the young adults in the 18 to 30 year old age group, the Armani Jeans collection provides a trendy yet fashionable and luxurious line of apparel.
A/X Armani Exchange: This is the licensed brand of chain of retail outlets of Armani fashion house. This serves as the ultimate testimony to the power of the brand. By providing the entire range of its apparels and accessories, Armani Exchange provides customers with the complete feel of the luxurious fashion of Giorgio Armani.
These sub-brands help Giorgio Armani to operate in many segments of the fashion apparel market. But this is not all. Not only does Armani straddle many segments of the same product category, but also many different product categories.
Leveraging its strong brand equity in the fashion apparel market, Giorgio Armani has ventured into other related categories like eye wear, watches and cosmetics. These are made available in each of the above-mentioned brand categories.
But Armani has not stopped at just these product categories: Armani has extended the brand into multiple other categories such as Armani Casa (up-market furniture), Armani-branded Dolci (confectionary), and Armani-branded Fiori (Flowers). And to add to this wide portfolio of brands, Armani struck a deal with a Dubai-based property group Emaar to come up with a chain of 14 Armani branded hotels and resorts by 2011.
Giorgio Armani’s future brand challenges
The founders’ dilemma: This phenomenon is classic and occurs for any company that is built on the basis of a strong and charismatic founder and leader. As the main competitive advantage for the company is the founder/leader himself, neither the founder nor the company would think of life after the founder. Moreover, whenever the companies’ success and survival depends very heavily on the existence of a single person, such companies and its leaders should take proper action from an early stage so that proper leaders can be nurtured within the organisation.
Brand dilution due to over-stretch: Strong brands, as is well known, provide companies with a very powerful tool to enter newer markets with limited investments by leveraging their strong brand equity. It gives companies numerous revenue streams. Given this simple but strong fact, it is not a surprise that most of the strong brands in the world have leveraged their brand equity and extended their brands into newer product categories, newer markets and even newer market segments.
Such examples are those of Calvin Klein and Pierre Cardin. One of the main factors that make fashion houses and their products premium are their exclusivity. By franchising their brand names to literally everything, these brands lost a significant portion of their strong brand equity.
Managing brand architecture: Effectively managing this portfolio of brands will prove to be the biggest challenge in the future. As the brand moves into different territories, interacts with different sets of customers, and represents different personalities, it becomes quite a task for maintaining consistency across all of its marketing communications and other activities.
Maintaining financial independence: Armani is a rarity from a financial perspective as well. Giorgio Armani has been the only shareholder of the company from its inception till now. Armani has not taken any bank loans either. Having this financial independence has helped Armani immensely as the company tests newer territories. With no pressures from shareholders and without having to bother about meeting quarterly targets, Armani has been able to operate quite successfully.
But to continue as a one man company in the future could be quite difficult. With consolidation happening in many industries, it might just be a matter of time that it catches up with the fashion industry as well. When such a thing happens, it could pose a big challenge to the working style of Armani and its continued success.
Sustaining consistent brand personality: Building and sustaining a personality that is relevant and resonates with the customer base is one of the most difficult aspects of building a strong brand. Armani’s presence in diverse markets, wide brand portfolio, and diverse set of customers, bring this challenge.
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