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Estudio hidrológico
Edinburgh Gate, Harlow,
Essex C M 2 0 2JE, England
and Associated Companies throughout the world.
ISBN 0 582 34297 X
First published by Little, Brown and Company 1999
This edition first published 2000
Original copyright Jonathan Mande 1999
Text copyright Penguin Books 2000
Birth of a Salesclerk
A Woman of Substance
Success Across Europe
The King of Knitwear
The Fifth Avenue Franchise
Images of Reality
The Burning Brand
Typeset by Ferdinand Pageworks, London
Set in l l / 1 4 p t Bembo
Printed in Spain by Mateu Cranio, S. A. Pinto (Madrid)
Published by Pearson Education Limited in association with
Penguin Books Ltd, both companies being subsidiaries of Pearson Plc
For a complete list of the titles available in the Penguin Readers series please write to your local
Pearson Education office or to: Marketing Department, Penguin Longman Publishing,
5 Bentinck Street, London W 1 M 5 R N .
Chapter 10 A Town Called Corleone
Chapter 11 The Main Streets of the World
Chapter 12 The Family
Business Wordlist
The first two sheep were yellow and blue and arrived by taxi. They were
followed by a third, this time pink, which got out of a pink Cadillac.
Luciano himself arrived shortly afterward in a green taxi. He was
wearing a brown jacket and dark pants, and a green tie decorated with
sheep. It was raining.
Benetton: no name has such an ability to charm and to shock.
Benetton is the real-life story of an extraordinary Italian family
and the organization they have built. Faced with poverty in a
country ruined by the Second World War, the Benetton family
started one of the most successful businesses in the world. Today
they supply 8,000 stores in 120 countries. They have also produced
some of the most shocking advertising images ever seen. This is a
story of hard work and success, invention and risk-takingand of
terrorism, public anger, and court cases.
Jonathan Mantle develops a picture of a daring and fearless
family and its business. He explores some of the stories behind
the "United Colors" and the brand of Benetton, and he examines
the price of the company's success. What has it cost the family,
and the people who work with them?
Benetton likes to keep tight control of information about the
company, and Jonathan Mantle is the first outsider to research the
family and the company in such detail. Mantle is also the author
of a best-selling book about the British writer and politician
Jeffrey Archer, and For Whom the Bell Tolls, a book about Lloyds of
London and its business.
Ten thousand meters above the United States of America, 1998
Luciano Benetton was on an airplane, reading a letter. In the few
minutes he took to read it, he traveled from Nevada to California.
In the private jet, there were media relations people and people
from the commercial department. Most of them were asleep.
Some of them were not even born when the business began.
Eight thousand stores. Eight billion dollars. The next move.
The next meeting with the press. The images . . . The United
Nations . . . Toscani . . . the green hair. The questions . . . the
answers. How much longer could he keep going?
Eight thousand stores. Eight billion dollars. This was the
reality. There was another time, though, when all this was just a
dream.
Luciano rarely looked back. He could remember most things
as they really happened, but he hardly ever spoke of them. He
spent most of his time in the air. Maybe, beneath the successful
businessman, there was still a small boy afraid of staying in one
place for too long.
Badoere, northern Italy, April 7, 1944
The Americans and British were moving up from the south and
their planes were destroying villages, towns, and cities.
When the bombs threatened their home town of Treviso, the
Benettons sheltered in the village of Badoere and shared a house
with a farming family. Each day, they tried to carry on life as
normal.
This morning, Leone had already gone into town to work at
his bicycle rental business. Now Luciano, his eight-year-old son,
was getting ready to cycle to school. It was a thirty-kilometer
round trip, but school was important. His father wanted him to
study and become a doctor.
"Eh, Luciano," the farmer's wife was calling. "Wait, don't go."
He ignored her and started to ride away.
"Luciano!"
This time the voice was his sister's. Although she was younger
than him, he could never ignore Giuliana.
"You can't go today," she was saying. "The bombers are
coming."
"They always say that. So what's new? They'll never touch the
school."
But he was thinking about his father, who was already in the
town. At that moment, in the distance, the alarms began to sound.
Much later, the door opened and Leone Benetton appeared.
He told them what had happened. He had taken shelter and
somehow escaped the bombs. Afterward, the dead and dying
were everywhere. The river was red with blood. Over 1,000
people had died.
Later they found out that the Americans or the British had
bombed the wrong town. They mistook Treviso for a town further
north, where Mussolini was hiding. Treviso had just become the
most heavily bombed town in the country, after Naples.
That winter, the temperature fell to -11C and there was little
food. Leone's health was failing and he spent most of his time in
hospital. His wife, Rosa, had a heart condition. But Luciano went
on cycling to school.
sock for Carlo, the youngest child. Giuliana was happiest when
she was knitting.
There was a knock at the door and their cousin appeared. Her
face told them the terrible news.
Leone Benetton died at least knowing that the war was over.
He left a widow, four young children, a couple of small rental
properties, a few small pieces of land, and a car, hidden away from
the Germans. At the age often, Luciano's childhood was over.
The following year, the Benettons moved to Santa Bona on
the outskirts of Treviso. Rosa's heart condition had returned and
she often had to rest in bed. Luciano and his sister were afraid
that she too would die, leaving them in charge of the family. So
Luciano got up early before school and cycled with a heavy load
of newspapers to Treviso station, where he sold them. He walked
the streets after school, delivering bread and selling soap door to
door. He stood in line waiting for bread, fish, and salt. And at the
same time Giuliana made the family's clothes, worked a knittingmachine in her spare time in the tiny workshop of a neighbor,
and dreamed of leaving school as soon as possible, so she could
work there full time.
Santa Bona, Treviso, 1949
Luciano was busy looking after what remained of the bicycle
business. At the other end of the room, Giuliana was knitting a
The Benettons were in a desperate financial situation. One by
one, Rosa had sold all the little pieces of land. Giuliana had left
school at the age of eleven and was knitting all day. Luciano was
still at school, but he was also doing the work of a man. This was
still not enough.
He made up his mind. "I'm not going back to school next
year," he told Rosa. "Giuliana works and she's younger than me.
I'm going to try to find a full-time job."
His mother said nothing and put her arms around him. Then
he burst into tears.
Piazza San Francesco, Treviso, July 12, 1945
Luciano was already working after school in a cloth and
clothing store called Alla Campana. He went to work there full
time. He swept floors, carried boxes, and learned about the retail
business. Like his father, he loved nice clothes. He saved enough
money to order a suit of his own design. It took him a year to
save the money, but when he wore the suit the girls turned and
laughed at him in the street. Luciano realized he still had a lot to
learn about the fashion business.
After a few years, he changed jobs. The Dellasiega brothers
hired him as a sales assistant in their clothes store in town. They
taught him everything they knew about clothing, and about
style. They encouraged him to develop his talents as a salesclerk,
and Luciano rewarded them by being a good worker. He was
never late and always polite to customers. But he knew that he
did not want to spend his life behind the counter.
One of his friends was Domenico "Nico" Luciani. He and
Luciano loved American culture in the form of books, movies,
and newspaper stories. They were also business partners. They
sold fruit and sandwiches at local fairs. They built a basketball
court. They were best friends, although sometimes Nico could
not understand Luciano.
"How can you work in an old-fashioned place like this?" he
asked one day in the Dellasiegas' store.
"Because I have to," Luciano replied. "My family need the
money. Anyway, I like what I'm doing. It gives me time to think."
"About what?"
"About getting rich."
"How are you going to do that, then?"
"I don't know, but I'm working on it."
Many years later, Luciano said: "The traditional stores were
going to die . . . and we killed them."
Santa Bona,Treviso, 1955
Clothing stores in Europe were very different then from today. A
long wooden counter separated the customers from the salesclerks,
and the clothes were hidden away, except for a few things in the
window. The customer described what they wanted to the
salesclerk, who then went away and picked out some clothes that
might be suitable. Even if the customer bought something, they
often did not get what they were really looking for.
Luciano was twenty years old and had been behind the
counter for a year when he realized what he wanted to do. The
kind of store and the kind of clothes he dreamed of did not exist.
In his dreams, the store did not have a counter, the clothes were
easy to look at, stylish, and reasonably priced. Young people came
into this store without their parents and without knowing what
they wanted. They came out with comfortable, colorful clothes.
There were thousands of young people, millions of them, out
there, but they did not have anywhere to shop.
After work, Luciano did not go straight home, but instead
went to the little workshop where his sister worked. In her spare
time, his sister designed and made brightly-colored sweaters for
the family. In a country where people all wore gray, blue, and
dark red sweaters, this was something different.
When he arrived, Giuliana was still working at her machine.
He waited until she had finished, then they walked out of the
workshop. On the way, he turned to her and said, "Giuliana? Why
are we working for other people? Why don't we start our own
business?"
"Because we're too young," she replied.
"You make them and I'll sell them. Why not?"
"That's just like you," she said. She was tired after the long day.
"You always say, 'if you could make more.'" She was quiet for a
long time. As they reached home, she said, "We're going to have
to buy a knitting-machine."
That night, over dinner, they announced the news to the rest
of the family. Rosa thought they had gone mad. Did they want to
send the whole family back into poverty?
"Don't worry," Giuliana said, "we won't give up our day jobs.
We'll work at night and in our spare time. You know we can do it."
"Where's the money going to come from to buy this
machine?" asked Gilberto.
Although he was only fourteen, Gilberto was the financial
brain of the family. The youngest brother, Carlo, who was
beginning to show the same abilities, agreed with him.
"Yeah, where's the money going to come from?" he asked.
Luciano tried to stay calm. "We'll rent a machine," he said.
"The important thing is that we all agree. Yes or no?"
They looked at each other. "Yes."
Luciano sold his possessions. Gilberto was persuaded to sell his
bicycle. They borrowed from family and friends, and slowly they
raised the money. Several weeks later, the machine arrived. They
threw a party in its honor, and called it "the new member of the
family." Within a few weeks, they realized that this was no joke,
and that the new machine had changed their lives.
Every day after they finished school and their various jobs,
Luciano and Gilberto prepared the wool for the machine. Each
night, after a day's work, Giuliana worked the machine from six
o'clock until eleven; sometimes past midnight. Rosa was her
assistant, putting together and ironing the knitted sweaters,
working until two or three o'clock in the morning.
Within a few weeks, Giuliana Benetton produced her first
collection. The sweaters were in traditional styles, but the
difference was in the colors. Yellows, greens, and pale blues;
nobody had seen colors like these in sweaters before. They gave
the collection the French name "Tres Jolie." Luciano's friend
Nico Luciani designed a label carrying this name, and Luciano
set out to sell the sweaters on foot, and by bicycle, to the citizens
of Treviso.
Within four months, Luciano was selling twenty Tres Jolie
sweaters a week. Two months later, Giuliana gave up her job to
work full time at home. She was making fourteen sweaters a day,
almost single-handed. The following year, in 1956, they bought a
second machine and Giuliana hired their first employees. They
bought a third machine, and the home turned into a clothing
factory. They were working nearly twenty-four hours a day and
were running out of space. How could they increase the size of
the business without risking everything they had worked for?
In the beginning, the Dellasiegas were not interested when
Luciano asked them to sell Tres Jolie sweaters in their store.
"Too risky," they said. The Dellasiega brothers were unsure
about selling any woolen sweaters.
That winter, Luciano decided on a different strategy. He
persuaded them to sell a small range of sweaters made by another
manufacturer. When these sold quickly, the Dellasiegas agreed to
order a small number of Tres Jolie sweaters. These sold very
quickly. The traditional store of the Dellasiegas had just become
the first one to sell clothes for the house of Benetton.
In the same year, 1957, the brothers made Luciano an offer
that he thought he would never hear. "Luciano," they said, "we'd
like to, ah . . . place an order."
The order was for 600 sweaters. Giuliana hired another girl
and they delivered the order on time. Later, they looked back on
this as their first "flash," or additional unscheduled collection.
This ability to react to a sudden change in customer demand
would one day make them famous.
The Benettons had crossed a line. They were now a family of
professional manufacturers.
The following year, in 1958, when Luciano finally gave up
working for the Dellasiegas, the store had a full shelf of Tres Jolie
sweaters.
Luciano had also met the woman he would marry. Teresa was
the daughter of an engineer from Padua who had moved to
Treviso. She came into the store one day and was immediately
attracted to the tall, serious salesclerk. She was different from
most of the other girls Luciano knew who, like Giuliana, had
been employed from a young age in workshops.
Giuliana also married, but after her first child was born, she
went straight back to work. Teresa was smart enough to
understand the importance of the family business to the
Benettons. When she and Luciano decided to marry, she went to
work with Giuliana Benetton.
Rome, Italy, 1960
Luciano had never been to Rome before. He wanted to know
what the stores looked like in a big city, and near the Piazza di
Spagna, he found a store of a kind he had never seen before,
except in his dreams.
The store sold only woolen clothes. It was full of them, and of
customers wanting to buy. These customers were not just
Romans, or even Italians. American air crew, British businessmen,
and French models were standing in line at the counter. The
sweaters were well made and in a wide range of colorsbut they
were not as good as Tres Jolie. Luciano saw that the future he
dreamed of was real, here on the streets of the capital city. He
looked up at the store. It was owned by a family he had never
heard of, called Tagliacozzo.
The Benettons had moved their factory from the house in
Santa Bona to a larger rented factory in their parents' home
village of Ponzano. Luciano and Giuliana were already planning
their next move, to build a factory next door. Luciano told his
sister that they had to find a way to break into the Roman
She designed a new range, based on the colors he had seen in
Rome. It included sweaters in thirty-six shades of wool. A few
months later, with a suitcase of sweaters, Luciano returned to the
capital city.
He had noticed an advertisement placed in a trade magazine by
a Roman called Roberto Calderoni. Ambitious and independent,
Calderoni was offering his services as a salesclerk. From the
moment they met, the young man from out-of-town and the city
boy liked each other. Calderoni became the first agent, outside the
family, for the Benettons and Tres Jolie.
Calderoni advised Luciano to set the prices for the new range
much lower than the prices in Rome. He also introduced him to
key retailers in the city.
Sergio Tagliacozzo took one look at the sweaters that Luciano
brought to Rome and placed an order for the whole range. This
was Luciano and Giuliana's first sale in the capital city.
At first, other store owners were not so enthusiastic. Soon,
however, they too were placing orders, at first in small quantities.
After several reorders, they also became regular customers.
The Tagliacozzos became firm friends of Luciano Benetton.
He noticed that they had turned around the traditional
relationship between customer, retailer, and supplier. The
Tagliacozzos sold what their customers wanted and told the
suppliers what to send. They believed that the future lay in a
chain of stores producing a range of designs in many colors at
affordable prices. These stores could go beyond Italy, even beyond
Europe, to the United States and the rest of the world.
Luciano listened to the Tagliacozzo brothers and went back to
Ponzano. The idea of a global chain of stores excited him, but as a
supplier and not as a retailer.
Ponzano, the Veneto, 1962
The factory could not deal with the increased number of orders.
The Benettons needed new equipment and a new factory. For
this, they needed the services of a bank.
The fourth banker he visited was only about two years older
than Luciano.
"You young people are all the same," the banker said. "You
want to run before you can walk."
Luciano went angrily home to Teresa.
"Don't worry," she said. "We've already come a long way, and
we'll go even further."
A short time later, Luciano was grateful to the bank manager.
"Did you hear what the banks have done?" his brother
Gilberto asked. Gilberto was now working full time as their
financial controller. "They've called in all the money they lent to
businesses without good enough guarantees."
The Benettons were not affected because the banks had
refused to lend them money.
"My God," said Luciano, "they're all in a mess, and we don't
owe a cent. We're going to be rich!"
Builders and materials suppliers were among the worst
affected businesses. Traditionally, they borrowed a lot of money
and moved from one short contract to the next. Maybe, just
maybe, the Benettons could arrange a deal with a building
company to build their own factory without help from outside.
A few days later, Gilberto called his brother.
"I've found two banks which will lend us some of the money,"
he said in disbelief.
They hired an architect called Cristiano Gasparetto.
Gasparetto needed help, so Luciano's next call was to his old
friend, Nico Luciani.
Nico was now studying architecture with the famous architect
Carlo Scarpa. His reply shocked Luciano.
"No," he told him. "I'm not in the business of putting up
factories for the middle class to make money from badly-paid
workers."
Nico, it seemed, had moved to the political far left. It was the
last time he and Luciano spoke for a quarter of a century.
Luciano then tried Tobia Scarpa. He had not yet put up a
single building, but he was the son of Carlo Scarpa and he
understood what Luciano wanted to do. He and his wife, Afra,
were employed by two big companies, designing new and
exciting types of furniture and lighting. Gasparetto and Scarpa
completed the factory project, but the Scarpas' relationship with
the Benettons continued. This was the first example of Luciano's
ability to recognize what people could do, even if they were
unsure of themselves. It was the beginning of a great creative
friendship.
In only eight years, the family had taken Tres Jolie from a
collection of twenty sweaters to a professional business
manufacturing 20,000 sweaters a year and selling them through
stores in Treviso,Venice, and Rome.
The name Tres Jolie showed that Paris still had a better image
and brand power than Rome. Similarly, Luciano recognized that
Italy fell behind other countries in wool quality and
manufacturing. The Benettons and Tres Jolie could not compete
internationally unless they improved their production methods.
To make the business competitive overseas, Luciano had to
continue the learning process that he had begun with the
Dellasiegas and continued with the Tagliacozzos.
To do this, he had to look beyond Italy. This time, he went
north across the Alps, Switzerland, Germany, and France to a
country he had never visited before.
London Airport, England, 1962
"Excuse me, sir," the British policeman said, looking doubtfully at
the young foreigner traveling alone, who was not wearing a jacket
and tie. "Can you tell me how much money you have with you?"
Luciano, who later became one of the richest men in the
world, showed him the contents of his thin wallet. The policeman
let him pass.
"Welcome to Great Britain," thought Luciano, "home of
racism, sheep, and the finest wool and manufacturing in the
world."
Luciano's tour of Britain lasted ten days and took him to
important manufacturers of woolen clothes in England and
Scotland. He learned a lot about their methods, particularly how
to make woolen clothes feel softer. At the end of his trip, he
ordered a number of British-made machines for coloring,
knitting, ironing, and drying wool.
Nearly twenty years later, Luciano returned and bought a
Scottish company.
Belluno, northern Italy, 1964
Piero Marchiorello worked for his father in a little clothing store
in the hill town of Belluno, seventy-five kilometers north of
Treviso. He had come to Rome for a meeting of small retailers.
One day, he was looking in the window of the Tagliacozzo
brothers' store. He went inside.
"Who makes this stuff?" he asked.
The assistant told him it was a company called Tres Jolie, in
Treviso. Marchiorello wrote down the name and address. Two
days later, he was in Luciano's office in Ponzano.
"I want to open a store in Belluno," he told him, "selling only
your clothes. I have no money or experience. But if you trust me,
I know we will be successful."
There was something about Marchiorello that made an
impression on Luciano, and he liked the idea of a store. There had
never been a one-brand, one-product store like this before. The
Tagliacozzas sold sweaters made by various people, including
themselves. Was it possible to open a shop that sold only
Benetton products? Luciano liked the logic of the idea, as well as
its newness, and if they did not do it, someone else might.
"We don't have the money," he said, "but I think we can find a
way to do this."
After talking to Gilberto, they found a way. Marchiorello
would borrow some money from a bank, and the Benettons
would lend him the rest. The deal was simple and based on trust,
with no written contract. Marchiorello would buy clothes only
from the Benettons, sell them, and keep the profits. He could not
return any clothes that were not sold.
Marchiorello also had to find a site for the store. A few weeks
later, he and Luciano were standing in the quietest part of town.
"Piero," Luciano said, "this is the worst site I've ever seen in
my life."
Marchiorello smiled. "Look on the bright side," he said. "If it
works here, it'll work anywhere."
At the same time, in Ponzano, the factory was near
completion. It was a beautiful, white building surrounded by
gardens. Natural light entered through the roof and flooded the
workspace. Luciano wanted more than just a place where people
earned money. He wanted to create a place where they would be
happy to work.
The cost of the new factory had doubled in six months, but
they were saved by an increase in business. They were now
making 100,000 sweaters a month.
The new factory opened on a spring morning with celebrations
that went on into the night. Five hundred invitations had gone
out, including invitations to all the employees and the villagers.
Four months later, Luciano and Teresa drove north in a truck
full of knitted clothes. They were going to Belluno, where
Marchiorello was waiting.
Marchiorello had designed a simple, brightly lit, white-walled
store. There were lots of open shelves onto which Luciano and
Teresa piled red, blue, yellow, orange, and green sweaters. Like the
sweaters, they had given the store a foreign name. This time,
however, it was English. London was the height of fashion in
clothes and music. They called the store "My Market."
The word soon went around the young people of the town
that My Market was the place to be. Marchiorello was selling
twenty sweaters a day. Six months after the store opened, he went
to see Luciano again.
"It's like I said. If we can do it in a place like this, imagine what
we can do somewhere else, where there are lots of people."
This time, he did not need to persuade Luciano. They soon
found a perfect site for a second store in the fashionable ski town
of Cortina d'Ampezzo, in the Dolomites.
The family had changed the name of the business from Tres
Jolie to Benetton. Luciano wanted to reach a stage where their
own name was on their clothes. One of Giuliana's designers
designed a pattern of a knot of wool for their labels. This logo
was placed with the word "Benetton" in white on a background
of green, Giuliana's favorite color.
The sweaters on sale were in the widest range of colors, but only
in the two smallest sizes. This store was only aimed at young
Two days later, Marchiorello called Luciano in Ponzano.
"They're standing in line around the block!" he told him.
"We've sold a third of the stuff already. Come and see, and bring
some more stock!"
Luciano drove north up the icy roads with his younger
brother Carlo. Outside My Market, young people stood in line,
waiting to get in. Inside the store, people were pulling sweaters of
all colors and styles off the shelves and handing them to the
salesclerk, five or six at a time.
The immediate success of the store in Cortina sent clothes
with the Benetton name home with vacationers all over Italy and
across the borders into Austria, France, and Switzerland.
Across the country, people were waking up to the fact that these
clothes were not only fun to wear but also a good commercial
idea. Calls began pouring into Luciano's office from people who
wanted to open new stores. Marchiorello could only open and
manage a limited number, so Luciano began to look for new store
owners among his friends. While the telephone continued to ring,
he also began to search for a site for the next store. Marchiorello,
however, had already decided where this should be.
Padua, northern Italy, 1967
The new store opened on a snowy morning at the height of the
ski season. This time there were shelves of sweaters around the
walls, and no counter. There was bright lighting and loud music.
Padua is one of the oldest university cities in the world. In 1967,
there were dozens of cafes, movie houses, theaters, and
bookstores, but still few stores for young people with limited
money. The traditional shopkeepers were not interested in this
young market, but when they heard that Luciano and
Marchiorello were planning to open a My Market in Padua, they
tried to keep them out of the central business district. Two
Cortina d'Ampezzo, northern Italy, 1966
shopkeepers who already sold Benetton, among other brands,
came to see Luciano.
"If you open in Padua, we'll stop selling Benetton," one of
them told him. "You'll be our direct competitor. You'll ruin us."
"I don't think so," Luciano replied. "In fact, I think it will
make things better for you."
In the spring of that year, My Market opened in Padua. This
latest opening led to lines of students and other young people
inside the store and around the block. The two men whose stores
were nearest the new store saw their sales of Benetton double.
Privately, Luciano had feared that the shopkeepers were right,
but the competition seemed to be improving sales of Benetton
clothes in both the old and new kinds of store. But how long
would this last? How long would it be before someone else came
along and began to compete with Benetton? If this happened,
the market would be broken up by businesses that Luciano could
not control. If there was going to be competition, it would be
better for them to compete with themselves than with others.
There were plenty of people who wanted to become store
owners in cities, towns and villages around the country. And, if
Benetton could compete with themselves, could they not also
compete with traditional shopkeepers and offer a variety of stores
and clothes for a wider range of customers?
While Luciano and Scarpa worked on the details, the number
of My Market stores increased very quickly. All these new stores
were started by friends, and friends of friends. They included
young men and women bored with their jobs in law and other
professions. All the new owners agreed to buy only from
Benetton. All of them opened their stores, designed by Scarpa, on
sites agreed by Luciano. They agreed that Luciano could take
action if he thought they were running the store in a way that
would harm the name of Benetton.
At first, the new store owners split the opening costs with
Benetton. As their numbers multiplied, however, Gilberto
decided that it was not necessary for the family to put money
into so many new stores; new store owners had to find the
money themselves. During this period, Benetton also ended its
relationships with independent retailers that had begun with the
Dellasiega brothers.
Luciano talked about this with Giuliana and Scarpa. Soon,
Scarpa came back with a series of drawings. Each of these
showed a store that would sell Benetton sweaters, but each one
was different. "Merceria" was for the mothers of their existing
customers. The store had softer lighting and gentler music, with
more traditional colors in clothes. "Tomato" was very modern,
for teenagers, with bright lights and a lot of metal and glass.
"Fantomax" had mood music and softer, "flower-child" clothes.
Like My Market, all these stores carried only the Benetton range,
and none of them carried the Benetton name.
Italy was experiencing political and economic problems. There
were bombings and shootings in the cities. But in the village of
Ponzano, the trouble seemed far away. The factory was very busy
supplying the growing number of stores, and the first nonwoolen range of shirts, pants, and skirts was sent out. Relations
were good within the factory. Benetton was the main local
employer, run by a family who had grown up in the area and
who had a strong relationship with their direct employees.
All four members of the family were, by this time, married with
children. They lived quietly. Giuliana's main interests were her
family and work. Gilberto, with his love of sport and with his
movie star good looks, thought hard before he bought himself a
Porsche, although he could afford many expensive cars. Carlo spent
much of his free time skiing and wandering in the mountains.
Luciano and Teresa, and their three children, Mauro, Alessandro,
and Rossella, moved to a new house close to the factory. Their
fourth and last child, Rocco, was born in 1971. Luciano had given
Scarpa complete control over the design of the house. Scarpa
described the result as "a house fit for a modern . . . prince."
The retail explosion was not slowing down. There were 500
stores across the country, and in all of them the name of Benetton
was now used instead of Tres Jolie on the labels of the clothes.
Luciano and Marchiorello made a number of visits to France and
brought back ideas to Giuliana and her team of designers. These
designers now included a former model for Christian Dior called
Lison Bonfils.
Lison was bright and direct and was certain that Paris was
ready for Benetton.
"There are thousands of kids out there desperate for something
fashionable to wear with blue jeans," she told them. "English
sweaters are too expensive and the French ones are ugly. I tell you,
the market is just sitting there, waiting for you."
In 1969, in the Latin Quarter on the Boulevard SaintGermain, the latest My Market opened for business. It was the
first in Paris and the first outside Italy. This time there were no
young people standing in line around the block, but there was a
steady stream of students. There was also a welcome for Benetton
from the members of the fashion media. One of these was Sandy
Obervitz, an American friend of Lison. She told Luciano that he
should take the clothes to the United States.
Avenue and stared at the buildings, at the tall stores: Bergdorf
Goodman, Bloomingdale's, Macy's, Saks. Luciano was part
tourist, part businessman, and he tried to understand as much as
possible on this first, short visit.
Now he was back again, but he soon found out that it would
not be easy to break into the American market. Benetton did not
have a recognized European name that could attract the attention
of American customers.
Luciano remembered later that his first experience of the
United States was a shock. He realized that the world was not the
same everywhere, and that the rules were different in the United
States.
One of his first calls when he got home was to Lison Bonfils.
"Tell your friend thanks," he said, "but we're not ready to
attack the United States yet. We need another six or seven years
at leastmaybe ten."
In fact, another nine years passed before they tried again, and
thirteen years passed before Benetton really succeeded in the
Luciano had visited New York City for the first time with Teresa.
They went there on vacation a few years after they were married,
when their first three children were still very young, and the
factory and store were newly opened. They walked up Fifth
The factory was not able to meet the rising demand for clothes.
Gilberto, however, said that they should not make the mistake of
building a big industrial plant. Across the country, workers in
large Fiat and Pirelli factories were increasingly unhappy, and
industrial discontent was growing. Instead, Luciano and Gilberto
bought and refitted two small factories in villages near Ponzano.
Between them, the four Benetton children now had twelve
children. Giuliana, at thirty-four, combined marriage and her three
children with her job creating new clothing ranges and leading her
growing team of designers. She created the first range of Benetton
clothes for babies and young children, from birth to the age of
New York City, United States of America, 1910
twelve, to wear at home, at school, and at play. It was called "012."
The clothes were sold through My Market, Fantomax, Tomato,
and Merceria, and eventually through 012 stores.
By this time, the company was secretly on the way to
becoming the largest single customer of wool in the world. They
also bought increasing amounts of cotton. The world was
wearing more and more blue jeans and T-shirts. Luciano himself
wore jeans much of the time and had observed that they were
popular with young people in America. He thought of the
name "Jeans West" for Benetton's first attack on the blue jeans
market. The first Jeans West store, designed by the Scarpas,
opened in Padua.
Soon afterward, the company also bought its first outside
brand. The "Sisley" brand had been created in 1968 to
manufacture and market jeans in Paris. Benetton bought Sisley in
1974 to obtain control of this range of informal clothes for men
and women.
Some years later, Luciano's eldest son took control of the
Sisley brand and turned it into a popular, outdoor fashion range.
By 1974, there were 800 stores across Italy and a hundred
more in France, Germany, and Belgium. Although in every
case Benetton supplied the goods, not a single store had the
Benetton name. Luciano preferred to keep the family out of the
media, particularly as political discontent in Italy continued, and
crime and kidnapping increased. The family did not give out
financial information, and Luciano stopped giving interviews.
The result was that the company grew quickly, while appearing
not to do so.
Luciano and Teresa had first met by chance when he was
working in the Dellasiegas' store. Now a chance meeting in
another store led to the end of their marriage. In Milan, at a staff
lunch, Luciano met Marina Salomon, who worked in a Jeans
West store.
"Are you familiar with the novels of William Faulkner?" she
asked him.
Luciano admitted that he was not. She immediately began to
talk to him about the books, and her extraordinary energy made
a strong impression on Luciano. At the end of the lunch, she told
him she was going to London as a student for a year.
"That's funny," he heard himself say. "I'm going to London
myself on business next week."
This was not true, but during the last hour Luciano had lost
the ability to tell what was true and what was not. He only knew
that he wanted to see her again.
The following week, he worried in a way that he had never
done before. This was crazy; she was a twenty-year-old student
and he was a forty-year-old businessman, married for fourteen
years, with four children. This was madness; this was dangerous.
He flew to London. At the airport, she burst from the waiting
crowd and ran into his arms. They spent the weekend together.
He came home in love and in shock. A week later, she wrote him
a letter saying that she loved him but that she did not want to
break up his marriage and his family. He agreed with her. They
tried not to think about what would happen when she came
home for a vacation.
The first vacation came, and Luciano and Marina's worst fears
came true. The moment she returned from London and they met
again, they knew they could not stay away from each other.
All through the winter and into the spring, Luciano lived a
double life.
Luciano knew that he could not end his marriage, but his
relationship with Teresa had changed forever. He had too much
respect for his wife to let her find out the truth from someone
else. After months of deceit, he told her about the affair with
Marina. Her reaction was bitter and angry. He could not stay now.
Luciano moved out of the family home and bought a house
forty minutes away in Venice, into which he moved with Marina.
After difficult talks, he and Teresa agreed that he would eat lunch
with the children each day in the family home.
Teresa had been a member of the Benetton family since the
earliest days. She was part of the family and the business, and her
relationship with the Benettons remained close. But others close
to the family business, like Tobia Scarpa, could not forgive
Luciano for what he had done.
Luciano wanted to take his business ideas to the world. At
home, his ideas had seen a single store develop into a network of
hundreds of stores. In France, however, it had not. Luciano
examined the French market with the help of Lison Bonfils.
They talked with Giuliana and decided that one of their
mistakes was in the colors. They were clean and international, but
they also had to be French to the French, and American to the
Americans. Giuliana redesigned the French range of clothes to
include softer colors like pale purple and chocolate brown. As a
result, the clothes no longer looked "foreign" and there was
suddenly an increased demand. By 1978, there were 200
Benetton stores in France.
The site and name of the first store in London were as
important as they had been in Paris. South Molton Street is in a
wealthy area near Oxford Street, where customers would accept
Italian clothes. The first store opened in 1977 and was called
simply "Benetton."
So the rapid growth continued beyond Italy into Great Britain
and other European countries. By 1979, there were 1,700 stores
The family spent months deciding where to open the first
American store. Their eventual choice was Manhattan, right in
the heart of New York City. This was a good area, packed with
tourists and visitors, many of whom would know the store
from their travels in Europe. As they had done in London and
Dusseldorf, they decided to call the first American store
"Benetton."
The N e w York opening was not like the opening of the first
stores in Italy. There were no young people standing in fine
around the block. The first customers were European visitors
and their children, who wanted familiar fashions to the styles
back home. Success came with the first sale in January 1980,
which brought the crowds and a reporter from Women's
Wear Daily.
Americans were soon reading how Sylvester Stallone, Dustin
Hoffman, and Jackie Onassis were all shopping at Benetton. But
the biggest name of all was photographed coming out of a
Benetton store on the other side of the Atlantic. Lady Diana
Spencer, who was going to marry the Prince of Wales, made the
name of Benetton famous. "Benetton dresses both queens and
housewives," one newspaper wrote. Unfortunately, this was an
Italian newspaper read by criminals and kidnappers.
across Europe. Sales had risen by 30 percent on the previous year.
The company still refused to give out information about the size
of its profits, and the family continued to avoid the media. In the
same year, however, the scale of Benetton became obvious when
the Australian Wool Corporation stated that Benetton used more
raw wool than any other company in the world.
Luciano decided to make his first real attack on the United
States of America.
At home, the tradition of kidnapping for money, which had in
the past only been connected with the Sicilian Mafia*, spread
across the country. In richer areas, people tried to keep their
wealth secret. This was easier to achieve in some cases than in
others. Luciano and his brothers and sister were now publicly
connected by name to a famous business success.
The foreign press wrote much more about the range and
profits of the business than the media at home. Few Italians knew
that Benetton now had six factories in and around Ponzano,
directly employing about 1,600 people. Ten thousand more were
employed in businesses connected to Benetton. People did not
know that the factories kept in daily contact with 1,500 stores
across the country. Two hundred of these were owned completely
by Benetton and the rest were owned and managed by Benetton's
special franchise system. People did not know, either, how much
profit from all these operations went into a family company that
was 100 percent owned by Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto, and Carlo.
To be nearer to his family, Luciano and Marina moved from
Venice to a house near Ponzano. They felt safe in the country and
usually left the house unlocked when they were at home. Marina
had finished her studies and decided to go into business. She
bought part of a company that manufactured shirts. Soon, she
was making ambitious plans for the future.
Luciano was also making plans for the family business. In May
1982, he and Gilberto met Aldo Palmeri, a 36-year-old director of
the Bank of Italy and the man they believed could help Benetton
develop from a family company into a global organization. The
three men immediately formed a strong relationship.
* T h e Mafia: an organization usually connected with crimes like selling drugs.
Originally a family organization based in Sicily, it now operates across Italy
and in the United States.
The following month, Benetton bought a large share in a shoe
manufacturer, their first move beyond the clothing business. They
began the process of opening up the company's business by
involving new managers, led by Palmeri, and making public the
first Benetton annual report. This showed that sales had
multiplied by 600 percent in the last five years; that these sales
totaled US$283 million through 2,000 stores, and that the
company was making annual profits of US$19 million. For the
first time, the facts were in black and white for everybody to see.
Quarto d'Altino, the Veneto, August 10, 1982
It was a Saturday night after dinner, and Luciano and Marina
were reading and watching television. The windows were open
and the sounds of the hot summer night were coming into the
room. Seven years had passed since they first met, but each day
Luciano was amazed by their close relationship.
Marina yawned and turned the page of her book. Luciano
started to speak and then froze. A gloved hand closed over his
mouth and he could feel the cold steel of a gun against his neck.
There were five of them, and their faces were covered. Before
he and Marina could react, Luciano was on his knees being tied
up and she was being led from the room. Luciano said, "Take
what you want, but don't hurt anyone."
Things happened at frightening speed. The five men took
Marina out of the room. She told the men, she said later, that the
house had a silent alarm which was already ringing at the police
station. Maybe this frightened the thieves. They took money and
all her jewelry, left her tied up in the bedroom, and ran away.
There was no alarm, but by this time the husband of a woman
who worked in the house had freed himself and called the police.
During the next few days, the newspapers were full of the
story of how the "king of knitwear" had been robbed. Luciano
bought an alarm system and put in electronic gates. He and
Marina tried to continue life normally, but they locked the doors
even when they were at home. Nearly two months later, they had
almost recovered; they told themselves that the attack was just
bad luck.
that they had uncovered more plots, this time to kidnap Giuliana,
and Luciano's son Alessandro.
Shortly afterwards, Luciano had another meeting that changed
his life and the life of the company. Once again, as with Teresa,
then with Marina, the business brought two people together in a
relationship that deeply affected both of them.
Quarto d'Altino, the Veneto, October 8, 1982
Milan, northern Italy, 1982
This time it was a Tuesday night, and Luciano and Marina were
driving back to their house from Treviso. It was dark and the road
was lined with bushes. They were approaching the gates when,
suddenly, two men jumped from the bushes and started to break
the side windows of the car. Luciano, who had slowed down,
sped forward again as the gates opened.
"Call the police!" he shouted to Marina, who reached for the
car telephone.
The car shot forward through the gates and for a moment it
seemed that they had escaped. Then they looked back and saw
that the two men had forced the gates open and were
approaching for a second attack.
"My God, they're going to get in through the windows!"
Marina cried. "Go back, go back!"
Luciano's car shot backward at high speed through the gates,
past the two men, and back up the road. Luciano drove at speed
for fifteen kilometers and more, while Marina hung onto his
arm and cried. Eventually, when they were near Venice, he
slowed down.
Back at the house, the police were waiting for them. The
attackers had escaped.
Luciano made up his mind. "That's it," he said to Marina.
"We're going to live in town, near lots of other houses, in a house
where we can be safe."
Some time later, the police told all the members of the family
Benetton had recently bought a 50 percent interest in the fashion
company Fiorucci, and for a long time Elio Fiorucci had wanted
to introduce Luciano to the photographer Oliviero Toscani.
"He's done some amazing pictures for us," he told Luciano.
"You have to meet him."
Luciano had never heard of him before. At the same time,
Fiorucci was telling Toscani about Benetton.
"You really should work for them," he said. "They're an
extraordinary company."
"Extraordinary . . . " Toscani liked the sound of this. He had
heard of Benetton and told Fiorucci what he thought of the
company. He believed that Benetton should be more ambitious
in its public image.
"They should get the message to the world that above and
beyond the clothes, they represent a whole new way of living and
thinking."
Toscani had come a long way from the poor area of Milan
where he was born. He had offices in New York and Paris, and a
farm in Tuscany where he raised horses. He shot pictures for top
American, British, and Italian magazines. As well as Fiorucci, he
worked for Valentino, Club Med, Bata shoes, and Esprit, the
Californian fashion retailer. He was very fashionable, and
underneath, very, very serious. "If you love me, follow me," read
the words beneath his girlfriend's backside in the picture he took
for Jesus Jeans. Toscani loved to be followed, but was rude about
other people who followed anyone or anything except themselves
and their own beliefs. Toscani believed that he was not just
producing advertisements, but making images for a new world.
Fiorucci introduced Luciano to Toscani at dinner one night,
and an immediate friendship grew between the two men.
Luciano saw the qualities that Toscani hid behind his loud,
impatient image. He understood that Toscani believed in hard
work, the family, and quality in everything he did. They began to
talk about working together.
Luciano returned to the hotel near Ponzano where he was
staying with Marina. Another eighteen months passed before he
called Toscani and asked him to produce a global picture strategy.
Although the market was enormous, Benetton was still only a
tiny presence in the United States. No amount of advertising in
the present style would help them gain the market share they
wanted. This only came with the success among American
college students of a football sweater.
It was a simple sweater, in blue and white, with long sleeves
and the Benetton name and logo on the front. Students shopping
in New York City first bought it and took it back to their
colleges in the fall. That winter and the following spring, all these
young customers and future opinion-makers wanted to be seen
in Benetton.
The success of this single product introduced the Benetton
range and the Benetton name to the American market. By 1983,
more stores had opened in Manhattan and then in other cities
across the country. They all had the Benetton name. The stores
were opening fasterfour a weekthan in any other country,
and their average size of between 250 and 300 square meters was
larger than the stores in Europe. This increase in sales and stores
changed the Benetton management in New York into a national
operation with bigger offices in the General Motors building.
Here, store owners and people who wanted to own stores came
from all over the country to talk business and see the twiceyearly collections.
Traveling enormous distances, Luciano visited every new site
and store owner. He seemed to hold the whole business in his
head. The foreign media reported his activities. The Benetton
name was known from coast to coast, and further west. In Japan,
four stores opened and twenty more were planned.
Advertising, which helped this movement around the world,
was expensive. The most widely-spread method of communication
across rich and poor countries was television, but the cost was high
and there was no guarantee that people would watch it in large
enough numbers. Luciano observed that there were very few
occasions when millions of people around the world sat down and
watched television. Sport was one of these occasions.
The most expensive, exciting, and dangerous sport was
Formula 1 car racing. The Formula 1 season lasted seven months
and moved around the world from place to place. Luciano agreed
with Gilberto that for US$4 million, they would sponsor the
Tyrrell Formula 1 racing team.
The first season in Formula 1 for Benetton was unsuccessful,
but it was widely shown on television. They looked around for
another team to sponsor, and this time chose Alfa Romeo
Euroracing. They looked forward to a year of greater success in
motor racing and to seeing the Benetton name on television
screens around the world.
The Benettons made Palmeri a director of Benetton Group Spa,
the main operating company. Palmeri was young and ambitious;
he took risks and accepted responsibility for his actions. He was
also committed to using the latest American business methods.
The Benettons gave him a lot of control, but at the top this was,
and always would be, a family company.
The name of this family company, however, was not and never
would be Benetton. At the top of the Benetton mountain were
Invep and Olympias, two companies which were owned 100
percent by the three brothers and their sister, who were the four
directors. The names and number of these family-owned
companies changed over time, but the principle of 100 percent
family control remained the same.
At every level, Palmeri began to introduce the systems that
would help the company achieve greater and greater growth.
Palmeri put in place new Benetton Group directors and a
management team to support them. He hired managers with
international experience and advisors from outside the company.
"When I joined Benetton," he said later, "they were doing
fine, but the family knew that growth was necessary We needed
to move further into foreign markets. But this also meant
bringing in a team of top managers."
Over the next two or three years, he employed a number of
experienced professionals, including Bruno Zuccaro as head of
information systems. Zuccaro's job was to develop the information
technology that connected the stores around the world to the
factories in Italy. If one of the Fifth Avenue Benetton stores wanted
a "flash" collection of 500 pale blue sweaters, they could have them
in a short time and at no greater cost than the usual collections.
Palmeri also saw the need to improve the international
markets. Benetton, with its special franchise system, could
increase its number of stores at almost no cost to itself. The
telephones rang twenty-four hours a day in the offices of nearly a
hundred Benetton agents around the world, with calls from
people who wanted to run stores and become rich. These people
were all prepared to put between US$10,000 and US$300,000
into a business.
The speed at which the business was growing was amazing. A
new store was opening nearly every day. This was in addition to
the 2,700 stores already selling the thirty million pieces of
clothing that were coming out of eight factories in northern
Italy, and now France and Scotland.
The second season of Formula 1 sponsorship was as expensive
as the first and did not produce better results. In America,
competitors like Esprit and Jordache were spending a lot of
money on advertising. Wanting to compete, but at a lower cost,
Benetton advertising started to concentrate on the international
success of the brand: "Benettoncotton in all the colors of
summer," read the advertisements in New York magazine. Below a
picture of a couple on a beach, in large letters, were the names of
fashionable cities around the world that Americans visited and
that had stores selling Benetton.'
In New York City, one of Luciano's dreams came true when
the store Macy's opened a Benetton section in its sportswear
department. But, placed between Calvin Klein and Adrienne
Vitadini, the Benetton section was a failure and did only a third
of the business of the nearest Benetton store. After six months,
the Macy's operation was closed. Luciano and the people he
worked with in New York realized that they needed to develop
the network in its existing form.
Luciano put Francesco della Barba, an experienced
businessman who also came from Treviso, in charge of the
growth of the Benetton business and brand in the United States.
He was the eyes and ears of Luciano, and in many cases he gave
franchises to Americans whose families originally came from
Italy. This led to the idea that there was an "Italian Mafia" in
Benetton. Although a large number of Benetton agents across the
United States and around the world were either Italian or from
Italian families, an equally large number of American store
owners were non-Italian.
Luciano knew that if Benetton wanted to match its
competitors in the US, its advertising had to make a strong
impression. The question was how to achieve this impression
without spending too much money.
One night, after dinner with Marina, Luciano found the
answer. He rang Toscani.
"Oliviero, when you have a moment, we need a global image,"
Toscani arrived in Luciano's office three days later.
"Can you do it?" Luciano asked him.
Toscani replied that he could. He had come with a single,
simple idea, as Luciano hoped he would. He called this idea "All
the Colors in the World."
The image was as simple as it was new. Young children and
teenagers from different countries and racial groups were laughing
and smiling together, united in all the colors of Benetton.
Toscani was creating the global image that Luciano wanted for
his company. The result was bright and beautiful. Toscani disliked
using professional models as much as he disliked big advertising
companies. The pictures used "real children."
Benetton increased the money it spent on advertising to
US$12 million, and started the "All the Colors" campaign in the
spring of 1984. The pictures are still as fresh today. Luciano saw
them for the first time in Milan.
"I felt a lump in my throat," he remembered later, "and my
heart started to beat faster. It was both strange and wonderful
suddenly to have an image that fitted us like a glove."
"All the Colors" won a magazine prize in the NetherlandsThere were hundreds of letters to the company from people who
liked the message, and some from people who did not. In South
Africa, the advertisements were banned, except in a few
magazines for black people.
"Shame on you!" wrote one person from Manchester, in the
north of England. "You have mixed races that God wants to
keep apart."
The success of "All the Colors in the World" encouraged
Toscani. Again, he shot pictures with a group of "real children
aged from four to fourteen and from countries as different as
Japan, Ireland, and the Ivory Coast. This time the children held
the flags of countries that were traditionally enemies: Germany
and Israel, Greece and Turkey, Great Britain and Argentina, and
the United States and the Soviet Union. Toscani also noted a
remark by a visiting U N E S C O official.
"My God," the official said, "it's the united colors we're seeing
here!"
Paris, France, 1985
President Gorbachev was at the top of the Champs Elysees; the
Soviet leader was going to meet President Mitterand of France
Watched by hundreds of millions of people on television around
the world, halfway along the route Gorbachev looked up and said
something to one of his assistants. This was a magic moment and
a rare piece of luck.
It was the idea of Bruno Suter of the Eldorado advertising
agency to line the Champs Elysees with billboards showing the
two small black children, one holding the American flag and the
other the flag of the Soviet Union, preparing to kiss each other.
Above the two children were the words, "United Colors of
Benetton."
Suter was sure that Gorbachev noticed the images. Others
closer to the President later agreed that he asked his assistant,
"Who is this Benetton, anyway?"
Five years later, Gorbachev was gone and Luciano was in
Moscow, where he planned to open the first United Colors of
Benetton store in the Russian capital.
control of the Benetton Group. This limited the amount of
money it could raise and the financial freedom of its directors.
The solution was to end this 100 percent family control of the
main business by selling 25 percent of Benetton Group on the
Milan stock exchange. They could do this without weakening
the family control because Benetton Group itself was part of
Invep. Invep, which was soon renamed Edizione, was owned 100
percent by the family.
At this time, Luciano was flying backward and forward across
the United States and Europe. In Budapest, he attended the
opening of the first Benetton store in Eastern Europe. Later in
the same year, a store opened in Prague, Czechoslovakia.
Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, 1985
The success of "United Colors" in Europe immediately
encouraged Luciano to test the campaign in the States. The
pictures, at a cost of US$3 million, had an immediate effect across
the country. Pictures of the American flag were banned in
advertising, but the secret of success for Benetton on the
billboards of America was in clean-colored clothes and images of
bright, smiling children.
Toscani could do no wrong. He explored important social
topics in new ways, using "real" models, and the results made him
rich and famous.
Aldo Palmeri was pleased with the way "United Colors" was
helping Benetton's American strategy. In 1985, the number of
stores in America rose from 400 to 500, and the sales for the year
were expected to be about US$150 million
Palmeri wanted to take the company beyond the fashion
market into financial services. He was looking for a US partner
to offer financial packages to the networks of stores there.
The main problem, however, as Palmeri saw it, was the family
The success on the main streets of the United States and Eastern
Europe was not yet matched by success for the Benetton racing
team. The third season of Formula 1 was more expensive and less
successful than the first.
"This is no good," Luciano said. "If we're going to stay in
Formula 1, I want to have more control."
The British-based Toleman-Hart team was for sale. Benetton
International NV, part of the Benetton Group based in
Amsterdam, paid US$2 million to become the new owner.
They changed the name of the team to Benetton Formula,
and the Austrian driver Gerhard Berger joined them. Benetton
was the only sponsor to own a team, and the team showed its
roots in the loud rock music that played in the pits, the
bright clothes worn by the pit crew, and the colored paintwork
of the cars.
Finally, in Mexico City, Gerhard Berger won a race for
Benetton. This left him seventh in the world competition at the
end of the season.
By this time, Benetton employed more computer operators than
people making clothes. Zuccaro's computer systems provided
more sales information than in probably any other company in
the world. The systems linked the whole business. Every day,
hundreds of stores across Europe sent information by computer
to Ponzano with data about sales, styles, and colors. "First we sell
the clothes, then we make them," was a Benetton joke.
This meant that much of the selling power of Toscani's images
was calculated before he took the pictures. His images did not
need to sell the clothes. The market was already there.
Toscani's spring and summer campaign for 1986 built on the
"United Colors" idea of racial friendship. The pictures included a
white teenager dressed as a Hasidic Jew, holding a toy globe
money box stuffed with dollar bills, standing next to a black
teenager dressed as a native American Indian. The dollar bills
angered Jews in the United States, France, and Italy. A flood of
letters arrived in Ponzano, accusing Benetton of encouraging
negative images of greedy Jews. In New York City, Jewish groups
threatened to stop shopping at Benetton.
This was serious. In the past, protesters might threaten to
blacken the name of My Market, or Merceria, or Tomato, or
Fantomax, or Jeans West, but not all of these and certainly not the
name of Benetton. A single brand, linking the family and the
business, meant that all three were under attack.
First, the company covered up the banknotes, then they
replaced the offending image with one showing a Palestinian and
a Jew holding a toy globe between them. This only made the
problem worse.
Luciano remembered, "I was a bit discouraged, but I had
learned an important lesson. We had chosen an image that
touched very deep feelings, beliefs for which millions of people
had fought and died . . . We had reached the limits and felt the
responsibilities of commercial art."
He knew that everybody was now watching Benetton, and
that they could easily annoy people and hurt themselves. Luciano
promised himself that he would control the company's image
even more closely in the future.
The Benetton factories in the United States, Italy, France, and
Scotland were making a wider range of clothes and products.
Luciano was so happy that he threw his arms around Berger and
then went back to his own car, leaving the others to celebrate.
"I was so excited," he said later, "but at that moment, I wanted
more than anything to be on my own."
This was a state that Luciano was experiencing more and
more. Marina rarely attended the races these days.
Palmeri offered 20 percent of Benetton Group, which had been
100 percent owned by Edizione, for sale to the public. This first
ever Benetton stock offer raised more than US$270 million in
less than fifteen minutes on the Milan and Venice stock
exchanges. The success of the sale showed that the markets were
confident that Benetton would perform well.
The company continued to grow, and Luciano was rapidly
being recognized as one of Italy's top businessmen. He knew they
always needed to go forward, but he was uncertain about selling
shares in the company. At the end of the day, he went back to the
design center at the factory.
Giuliana was still there, working late, long after most of the
others had gone.
"Well, we did it," she said, referring to the events of the day.
"We did it," she said. "So, let's get on with it."
There were shoes, sunglasses, and watches. With the new and
wider range of clothes came a new and wider range and size of
Benetton had already killed the traditional store owner; now
underwear, shoes, watches, and sunglasses were killing the
traditional Benetton stores. It was a number of years since a new
My Market, Merceria, Fantomax, or Tomato had opened, with
their small shelves and limited changing space. More and more of
the original stores had been redesigned and had changed their
names to Benetton. By 1996, My Market had disappeared
completely and there were only a few examples left of Merceria,
Fantomax, and Tomato.
Most of the stores that continued to open almost daily were
now Benetton, Sisley (under the control of Mauro Benetton),
"Benetton U o m o " (Benetton Man), and 012.
Mauro Benetton was Luciano and Teresa's son. He started his
career folding sweaters during his school vacations, then went to
work in the Benetton store in Paris. He was ambitious and
believed in hard work. When he was given the job of turning
around the Sisley brand and shops, he created a stronger, sexier
image. He rebuilt the business in the United States and Europe,
and in the process, earned a lot of respect. Later he told a
journalist that he wanted to achieve something for himself, not
just become part of something that was already there.
Venice, northern Italy, 1981
"Hello, this is Benetton Group in Ponzano. I have Mr. Luciano
Benetton on the line for you."
Luciani was amazed when Luciano said, "Nico, how are you? I
want to talk to you."
Luciani agreed to meet him that weekend in Ponzano.
He drove out there on Sunday morning. They talked about
their old friendship and, over lunch, Luciano told Nico about his
plans for a Benetton Foundation.
"I understand if you criticize some of the things I have done,"
he said, "but do you think if I gave some money for a research
center, you could help?"
Instead of offering to help with his cultural projects, Luciano
was offering his old friend a job.
Nico said he would think about it. After twenty-five years of
silence between them, Luciano was asking him to change his life.
A few days later, he agreed to become director of the Benetton
Benetton continued to grow. The first Benetton stores opened
in Cairo. The first Benetton superstore, housing Benetton, Sisley,
012, and Benetton Uomo under one roof, opened at home. The
new "Zerotondo" range was introduced, with clothes for babies
and very young children from birth to two years old.
The 1988 Formula 1 season progressed satisfactorily. In
Treviso, the family's love of sport, their sense of duty toward local
people, and the good image it gave them in public, encouraged
them to set up Verde Sport. This organization managed the
Benetton-sponsored teams, training programs, and sport centers.
Nico Luciani had traveled a long way from the town of his
childhood and his youthful friendship with Luciano. After
becoming an architect, he worked on town planning and political
matters. Although he had not spoken to Luciano for nearly twentyfive years, he wrote to him about several cultural projects, asking if
Luciano could help. One day the telephone rang at his home.
There were now 600 stores across the United States. Edizione
bought the historic Scribner Building on Fifth Avenue. This was
still the site of a famous bookstore and was once home to the
Fifth Avenue, New York City, 1988
publishers of Ernest Hemingway, E Scott Fitzgerald, and Thomas
Wolfe. The company spent US$4 million on improvements to
the building.
But there was trouble in the American network. Some store
owners believed the "no written contract" agreement they had
with Benetton did not give them enough legal protection.
Already hit by a fall in the value of the dollar, they began to
complain that Benetton was allowing new stores to open only a
few blocks away from existing ones.
"They're selling the name too often, too easily," complained
one New York store manager, "and not risking a cent of their
own."
Benetton replied by opening the first American superstores in
Manhattan and San Francisco. These offered a greater selling area
in a single place. Existing store owners complained that the
company was trying to force them out of business.
Competitors such as Gap changed their collections every four
to six weeks. Benetton, with two collections a year and "flash"
reorders between those times, had forgotten the rapidly changing
tastes of the American teenager. The love affair was over.
In the fall of 1988, Luciano met and listened to store owners
and agents across the United States. At the same time, in other
parts of the country, there was news he did not want to hear.
Protesters working for animal rights had collected information
that animals were being tested cruelly to prove that a new range
of beauty products, Colors de Benetton, were safe to use.
The tests were described on the pages of the media in great
detail. Body cream had been put into the eyes of rabbits. Rats had
been fed bath and shower products. All the animals had died.
At first, Benetton said that they had not known what was
happening and were shocked. Two months after the first stories
appeared, they stated publicly: "We have stopped all testing on
animals. Our company is making a serious commitment to find
Aldo Palmeri had a simple solution for raising cash for Benetton
Group in the New York financial markets. He offered shares in
Benetton directly to people in the United States, Canada, Japan,
and Europe.
Benetton had the support of business strategists. They
recognized that Benetton had problems in the United States, but
that the company was taking steps to solve these. The relationship
between Benetton Group and Edizione confused some people.
They noted that Benetton Group managers appeared to spend
other methods of testing. We will not introduce products that
need animal testing."
Then came more falls in the dollar, higher costs, and more falls
in sales. Retailers across the United States felt the deepening
recession and talked to their lawyers. Some store owners
criticized the advertising for Benetton, but they could not prove
that Toscani's "globe" campaign had damaged sales.
Although growth slowed, the United States still provided 14.5
percent of Benetton's business around the world. If stores closed,
it could hurt sales but it did not seriously hurt Benetton because
the stores were owned and operated by independent store
owners.
It was becoming clear that the future lay in fewer small stores
and greater numbers of single, large superstores on the right sites.
The Benetton clothes themselves would have to meet several
different areas of taste. These included traditional colors for
customers in New England, more fashionable shades in New
York, and light colors for the sunniest states in the country.
Black and W h i t e
New York City, the United States of America, 1989
company time (and therefore shareholders' money) on personal
Benetton family interests which did not bring profit to outside
shareholders.
Palmeri handled these tricky questions.
"We need to define a new strategy," he said. "We need to
strengthen our management in the US and we may need to
bring in different people."
He won agreement for his plan to widen the range of brands
beyond the Benetton name.
Gilberto Benetton was taking Edizione"the strong box," as
he called itfurther away from clothing and the Benetton Group.
The family were involved in new financial service activities, and
started to buy ranches, property, and businesses in the United
States. In May 1989, Edizione also bought a 70 percent share in
Nordica of Italy, the world's leading maker of ski boots.
Nordica and the other sports companies were privately owned
by Edizione and run by Gilberto completely separately from
Benetton Group. The independent nature of these companies
meant that Benetton Group advertising did not cover their
activities.
Within Benetton Group itself, a new communications system
had placed total power for managing the image-making of the
business and brand in the hands of fewer than ten people. United
Colors Communication became responsible for Toscani's pictures
and for showing them to Luciano for his final agreement. The
Benetton knot logo also disappeared, and a small green square
was put in its place with the words "United Colors of Benetton"
stamped on it.
The clothes themselves were taken out of the advertisements.
This helped the company to develop a single, global brand rather
than show a variety of products for different countries and
markets. The 1989 campaign delivered an openly political
message about racial equality. One image showed two men, one
black and one white, chained together. A second image showed a
young black man and a young white man in baker's clothes,
baking a loaf of bread. The third image showed a black woman
breast-feeding a white baby.
This last image won prizes in Europe, but it was taken down
from the advertising billboards in the United States because it
reminded people of the days of slavery. The black woman's breasts
were too shocking for billboards on the London subway, and the
picture with the chained men was removed because black Britons
thought it showed a white policeman with a black prisoner.
Toscani ignored the complaints. As part of his hunt for global
images, he visited his local hospital. Here, in the delivery room,
he found a perfect example of the kind of image that he was
Changes were taking place in the Benetton Formula racing
team. Luciano believed that Flavio Briatore, a Benetton clothing
development manager from the United States, could do a better
job of managing the team.
Briatore admitted that he knew nothing about car racing, and
he encouraged his image as a mystery man who liked the
company of beautiful women. This did not make him popular
with the Grand Prix racing crowd, but Luciano trusted him to
improve the team's performance. In the same way that he had
taken an immediate liking to Toscani, he felt that Briatore was the
right man for the job.
After thirteen years, Luciano and Marina were no longer
living together. Luciano's constant traveling around the world for
the business had not helped their relationship. He moved out of
town to another house. Marina never spoke publicly about their
After the success of the image of the black woman and the
white baby, Toscani's 1990 spring and summer campaign again
followed the idea of racial equality. He showed a number of
images, including a black child sleeping on a blanket of little
white bears, and two small boys, one black, one white, sitting
together on babies' toilets.
The last image led to a strong reaction in Milan, where
Benetton hired the largest billboard in the world. The picture was
banned by the city authorities. At the same time, Toscani won a
number of industry prizes for his images.
After less than three years in the financial services business,
Gilberto decided that Edizione should pull out. By the end of
the year, he had sold nearly US$300 million of their shares in
financial services businesses. It was a good time to sell. As the
recession affected personal spending on financial services, the
value of these shares fell sharply.
"If we had waited six months longer," Gilberto said later, "we
would have had big problems."
In 1990, Palmeri decided to leave Benetton after seven years
with the company. He joined Citibank, but remained friendly
with the Benettons.
Benetton celebrated its twenty-fifth birthday at the end of the
summer with a party in New York's Central Park, and three days
later in Ponzano.
As Edizione moved out of financial services, the company was
able to shop for new projects. They bought a share in Rollerblade
Inc. of Minneapolis, and Prince, the American tennis equipment
manufacturer. Like Nordica and Rollerblade, Prince was managed
and marketed separately from the Benetton Group and Toscani.
The following year, Edizione bought Kastle, the Austrian ski
maker and one of the great names in the sport. The family
"strong box" was also buying sheep and cattle ranches in
Argentina and Patagonia.
Edizione still owned 81 percent of Benetton Group, and its
role still confused industry observers who watched the share
price. Profits from only 19 percent of the shares went into
outside shareholders' pockets, and the rest went back to
Edizione.
Toscani's latest images were reaching audiences in more than a
hundred countries. He turned again to social topics. A picture of
brightly-colored condoms swimming across a white background
was intended to make people more familiar with condoms by
showing them in a playful way. In New York City, the company
gave money to a program that provided condoms and
information about AIDS* to public schools. Benetton employees
handed out HIV* guides in the poor areas of Rio de Janeiro in
Brazil "because it was important that even people who could
never buy a Benetton sweater should get the information."
The condom campaign confused the United States. Young
customers agreed with it, but some older people were disgusted.
Toscani's second image came out at the beginning of the Gulf
War with Iraq. The image of First World War graves in Belgium
showed long rows of crosses. It was too powerful and was banned
in Italy, France, Britain, and Germany. Another image showed
three black, white, and Asian children, sticking out tongues
which were all the same color. This was taken off billboards in
Arab countries.
Benetton announced that it wanted to raise more money by
selling twelve million shares. The latest payment to shareholders
had been cut by half; the new shares would not be available to
existing shareholders. Edizione was, for the first time, giving
up its slice of the new shares and letting new people buy them.
* AIDS, HIV: HIV is an infection that can be passed between people during
sex or by infected blood. People who are HIV positive may develop AIDS, a
disease that can lead to death.
The aim was to use the money to pay for the latest
development into Latin America and the Middle East. They
planned to sell Benetton Group shares on other international
markets, starting in Tokyo and moving onto Paris and possibly
Singapore. Luciano also stated that they wanted to open 300
stores in China over the next few years.
Monza, Italy, 1991
The Grand Prix racing season had been satisfactory for Benetton
Formula and their two Brazilian drivers. Nelson Piquet came
third in the American Grand Prix and Roberto Moreno was
placed fourth in Belgium. There, a young German, Michael
Schumacher, first appeared for the Jordan team. He came
seventh, ahead of his team leader, on a race course he had never
seen before.
Briatore approached Schumacher after the race and asked him
to leave the Jordan team in return for a long-term contract with
Benetton. Briatore then fired Moreno from the Benetton team
and gave Schumacher his place.
Schumacher's first race for Benetton was the next Grand
Prix of the season in Monza. He was faster than Piquet and
drove Benetton to fifth place. The Jordan team was unhappy at
the way Schumacher had joined the rival team, but the
directors of Benetton Formula knew that there was nothing
they could do.
At the end of the season, Nelson Piquet departed from
Benetton and retired from Grand Prix racing. Briatore signed
Schumacher and Martin Brundle as drivers for the following year.
all life." The first image showed two young models, dressed as a
priest and a nun, kissing. The image was immediately banned by
the Italian advertising authorities and the Pope himself was
reported to be angry, but it was very successful in many
countries. A German nun wrote to Benetton, "I feel the photo
expresses great tenderness and peace."
The second image was of a little white girl and a black girl.
The black girl's hair style was unacceptable in the United States
and Great Britain, where it was thought to be offensive to black
people. The British Advertising Standards Authority had warned
Benetton that the image would cause trouble, but that was
exactly what Luciano and Toscani wanted to hear. Luciano
claimed that he was surprised by the negative reaction. He said
that the children were "two sides of the same coin, but which is
good and which is bad?" The picture should remind people not
to judge others by their appearance.
Toscani's fall and winter campaign was about "love, the reason for
Letters for and against these images poured into Benetton
offices at Ponzano. One person who reacted negatively was
Luciano's mother, Rosa. Rosa had not seen the pictures, but she
did not like what she heard.
"I don't like these things," she told an interviewer. "My
children tell me that young people understand these photos and
they cause people to talk about the brand . . . but I feel very
badly about it. My children have to stop, or I will get very
angry."
All this, of course, made more people talk about Benetton.
The third of Toscani's images started arguments that are still
heard today. Two years earlier, at his local hospital, he had taken a
series of photographs of five newborn babies. Toscani chose one
of these images, a baby girl called Giusy, covered in blood, taking
her first breaths.
The image of baby Giusy on thousands of billboards across
hundreds of countries offended too many people, maybe because
of its size. In the United States, the picture was banned. Even in
Japan, which had praised the other advertisements, it was refused
by some magazines. At home, the protests began in Palermo,
where the local authorities asked Benetton to remove billboards
that showed the image. Criticism at government level led to the
removal of the image from hundreds of billboards in Britain,
France, and Ireland.
Giusy's first moment of life was also shown on the cover of
Colors, Benetton's "news magazine for the global village." Toscani
was in charge of this new magazine, which was available free in
Benetton stores in hundreds of countries.
Billboards and magazines showed empty spaces instead of the
image. The affair of baby Giusy did not appear to hurt sales,
though, and could not be allowed to do so. The Benetton
communications chief, Laura Pollini, apologized on British
television news, "We are very surprised and sorry that we have
created a problem."
Toscani said publicly that he was sad that there was trouble
about the advertisement in the UK because the country was
usually very understanding. Maybe, he continued, if the
advertisement had used a dog or a cat, British people would not
have been offended. He believed that Benetton was very
"generous" to use "real" images like a baby's birth. The cord that
joined the baby and her mother added to Benetton's "united"
Privately, he was very angry. He did not believe that he had to
think like other people; he did not have to follow the rules of
normal society.
"Shall I be killed or go to prison? I am a photographer, and I
have a right to photograph and show whatever I want."
At the same time, he told Luciano that their advertisements
should become even more ambitious.
For the new spring and summer campaign, Toscani chose seven
images of "reality." These included a gang murder in Palermo, a
flood in Bangladesh, a boat full of people escaping from Albania,
a burning car in Sicily, and a Liberian soldier with a gun, holding
a bone from a human leg behind his back. The single green and
white logo on each picture carried the words "United Colors of
The reaction to these images was immediate. Most of them
were banned to various degrees in various countries. But the
seventh image had a clear effect on the stores for the first time.
This showed an American AIDS sufferer, David Kirby, with his
family in the moments after his death. The family had agreed that
Benetton could use the image. Now, however, Toscani's campaign
was going out of control. It was threatening to damage the image
and even the sales of the company.
Saturday was the busiest day of the week in London. A group
of protesters from an international AIDS pressure group chose
this time to protest against Benetton on the sidewalk outside the
Oxford Street store. Their plan was to get the attention of passing
crowds, the store itself, and its customers.
Together, shouting loudly, they rushed into the store and
began to pull the sweaters from the shelves and throw them high
into the air. Then, the protesters left as quickly as they had come.
All the clothes had to be picked up, folded, and put back in the
There was anger about the use of the picture among politicians
and groups concerned about AIDS. Benetton store owners and
staff were upset. The company was forced to defend itself.
"It is reality," Luciano told the media. "Our company has to
make people think. You can be more useful than selling a
product. To improve the image of the company, we thought we
could do something more. We wanted to show our care for
others, as well as our own product."
One interviewer asked him, "Would you stop the campaign if
it didn't sell sweaters?"
"I would think about it," Luciano said calmly.
Toscani was angry but tried not to upset the questioners. He
asked why reality shocked people. He argued that traditional
advertising pictures were lies but Benetton was showing the
truth. Benetton, he continued, was a business and had to make
money; it did not exist just to give money away.
"No," he and Luciano both replied to another question.
"We have no plans to give money from our profits to AIDS
groups."
Despite this remark, Benetton was already working with AIDS
groups. In the United States, the company produced a guide to
safe sex. In South Africa, it paid for condom advertisements in
front of five hospitals. In Germany, Benetton raised large amounts
of money in the country's hundred largest nightclubs to help
fight the spread of the disease.
In America, where the photograph had been taken, Vogue
magazine decided to print the picture. David Kirby's family
supported the use of the image, saying that it was a way of showing
the dangers of AIDS and continuing the struggle against the disease.
"We don't feel used," said Kirby's father. "We are using
Benetton. David is speaking louder now that he is dead than
when he was alive."
Toscani's images for the fall and winter campaign continued
the reality idea but were less shocking. People could not bear too
much reality. Maybe the effects of this campaign were growing
less powerful.
The Formula 1 racing season ended well. Michael Schumacher
won in Belgium. He came third in the drivers' world
competition, and Martin Brundle came sixth. Late in the summer
of 1992, 200 people moved into the team's new factory in
Oxfordshire.
Luciano's son, Alessandro, represented the family on the team,
but it was run by Flavio Briatore and Tom Walkinshaw.
Increasingly, success in racing was a result of putting millions
of dollars into technology. Both Briatore and Walkinshaw were
interested in how much difference technology could make to the
speed of the cars.
Palmeri had returned to his job at Benetton Group.
"Our relationship was so good that, after he'd been gone
for some time, we decided to persuade him to come back,"
Gilberto said.
His return to the business helped Luciano to do something he
had dreamed of; he went into politics. He was elected to
represent Treviso.
At the same time, his relationship with Marina started again.
Although they were only together for a short period, she later
gave birth to their child, a son whom she named Brando. She had
wanted a child for a long time, but this event finally ended her
association with Luciano. This time, he ended his relationship
with her forever.
Palmeri looked at the costs of advertising and sponsorship and
found that they came to nearly 4 percent of the total income of
the business, around US$60 million.
Enstone, Oxfordshire, England, 1992
For the spring and summer advertising campaign, Toscani
photographed Luciano in a way that shocked other politicians.
He showed Luciano without clothes. The pictures had words
across them saying, "I Want My Clothes Back" and "Empty Your
Closets."
This latest Benetton campaign invited the world to give its old
clothes to 7,047 Benetton stores in one hundred countries.
Benetton would then transport the clothes from the stores and
sort them so they could be given out around the world by
Caritas, the Red Crescent, and the International Red Cross.
Four hundred and seventy thousand kilos of clothes were
collected in eighty-three countries and sent to Africa, Asia, and
the former Yugoslavia. The project was particularly successful in
Japan, where people had little space for unwanted clothing.
But as Luciano explained, the campaign had three purposes: to
help the poor who had no clothes, to help the rich who had too
many, and to help himself. After they had emptied their closets,
the first thing many people did was to go out and fill them again.
Luciano attended the Italian government offices once a week.
Palmeri guided Benetton Group steadily through this period of
Luciano's political career. Sales and profits were both rising, and
the factory was growing again to satisfy the increase in demand.
The latest building, designed by the Scarpas, handled fifteen
million pieces of clothing in that year.
Also growing fast and still separate from Benetton Group were
the sports and equipment companies belonging to Edizione.
Toscani's fall and winter United Colors of Benetton campaign
consisted of three photographs showing parts of a body. Each
image was stamped with the words "HIV positive." The aim was
to show the three main routes for infection.
The reactions this time included anger from AIDS groups in
the United States and other countries. They felt that the images
wrongly suggested that HIV positive people should somehow be
"labeled." In France, a government-sponsored AIDS group took
legal action against Benetton for using AIDS for commercial
profit. In February 1995, a Paris court decided against Benetton
and told them to pay US$32,000. Five months later, a German
court made a similar decision. A French AIDS sufferer placed
an advertisement in a magazine showing his face and the
words, "During the pain, sales continue. For the attention of
Luciano Benetton."
Luciano was surprised by these reactions. He and Toscani had
created the images, but had failed to communicate the message.
Benetton store owners in countries with a strong religious
tradition like France and Germany were becoming more and
more nervous. Despite Benetton's extraordinary sales, these were
difficult times for many store owners, and much of the Western
world was in recession. But the store owners had no control over
the advertising of the brand. If AIDS protesters could take direct
action, so could they.
Knightsbridge, London, 1993
Benetton's Formula 1 team was improving. Michael Schumacher
had come second in France, Canada, Great Britain, Germany, and
Belgium, and had won in Portugal. The team managers were
spending a lot of money on electronic and computer equipment
to improve the performance of the cars.
At the end of the season, the Formula 1 authorities announced
that some of these methods would be banned for the following
year. Briatore and the other team managers needed to find other
ways of making their cars go faster.
Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1993
Everybody thought that the dead man's clothes belonged to
Marinko Gagro. Benetton called the new image "the known
soldier." But Gojko Gagro saw the image in a newspaper and
contacted a German newspaper. He agreed that he had supplied
photographs of his dead son, which were not used, and a letter,
which was. He did not, he said, supply the bloody clothing which
appeared in the image. He repeated that his son's clothing had
been burned at the hospital. He added that his son was shot in
the head, not in the chest, as Benetton's picture suggested.
Public opinion about this campaign was even stronger than for
the AIDS image of David Kirby. In France, several Benetton
stores were again attacked, and trouble was starting in Germany.
Unhappy Benetton store owners decided that they had at last
found a reason to start a legal attack on the company.
Luciano decided to send his elder son Mauro, who was
marketing manager of Benetton Group, to the United States to
continue improving the business there. Luciano himself had
decided to leave politics. He said that the two roles of politician
and businessman were so important that he could not do both.
Luciano had reasons for concentrating his energies on the
business; he also had the time. He had broken with politics, and
he had broken with Marina. She began a relationship with
another man, Marco Benatti, with whom she had two more
children, both sons. She built up her childrenswear business and
was thinking about entering politics.
Marinko Gagro was a thirty-year-old Bosnian Croat, killed in
battle. He was shot through the head and died in hospital, where
his bloody clothes were burned. His father, very upset and feeling
powerless, heard from a Red Cross worker that someone was
starting a campaign against war.
Mr. Gagro gave the Red Cross worker all that he had left of
his son: some photographs. He also gave the worker a letter:
"I, Gojko Gagro, father of Marinko Gagro . . . would like my
son's name and all that remains of him to be used in the name of
peace against war."
The Red Cross worker thanked him and promised to pass on
the photographs and the letter.
The photographs of Marinko Gagro and the letter by his father
came into the possession of Chem Co., the Trieste based company
that acted as Benetton's agent for Sarajevo. At the same time, a
bloody T-shirt and pants came into their possession through the
Red Cross. These three thingsthe photographs, the letter, and
the clothesall found their way to Ponzano and to Toscani.
His spring and summer campaign for 1994 showed the bloody
clothes of a dead Bosnian soldier, with the letter from Gojko
Gagro across the top of the picture. At the bottom left of
the picture was the United Colors of Benetton logo. This
shocking image appeared on billboards and in newspapers
across 110 countries.
Leading newspapers like the Los Angeles Times and Le Monde
refused to carry it. The Vatican said that Benetton was practicing
"image terrorism." In France, the advertising weekly Strategies
said that it would not write about Benetton as long as this type of
advertising continued: "Besides the disgust it causes, this ad raises
the question of the responsibility of advertisers. Can one do
anything, use anything, to attract attention?"
Luciano needed to finish rebuilding Benetton in the United
States and to help the growth of the business and brand in
Australia and South Africa. The sale of more Benetton shares was
planned to increase the number of international shareholders in
the business.
At home, Toscani was arguing more violently and publicly with
Palmeri, whom he accused of being "old-fashioned." Although
Kheir differences were over principles rather than management
and money, at the heart of their argument was the direction of the
US$60 million that Benetton was spending on advertising.
"Since you returned to the company," Toscani wrote to
Palmeri, "I am no longer able to work as before . . . Everything
has slowed down . . . Have I ever dared to give you advice on
finance or running the company?"
He said he was leaving.
By the time of the British Grand Prix at Silverstone,
Schumacher and Benetton had six wins and one second place
from seven races. During the British race, Schumacher was shown
the black flag and ordered to return to the pits. He initially stayed
in the race and later claimed not to have seen the flag. It appeared
at times that the car was driving Schumacher, rather than
Schumacher driving the car. He was banned for two races and
Benetton paid damages for not immediately handing over
computer equipment to the international motor sports authority.
Schumacher's next race was in Germany. Events there stayed
in the minds of many who witnessed it. Schumacher was running
second when the other Benetton driver, Jos Verstappen, came
into the pits to refuel. He was in his car, surrounded by
mechanics, when the fuel caught fire. For four seconds, car,
driver, and mechanics were covered in flames. This was seen by
millions of people on television.
Verstappen and the Benetton crew had an amazing escape. The
driver and five mechanics suffered only small burns. All the
equipment was taken away for inspection, and the inspectors
found that a piece of the fuel pipe was missing, which slightly
increased the speed of refueling. The team managers were
ordered to appear in front of the authorities, although Briatore
continued to protest that they had done nothing wrong.
At the same time, in Great Britain, a company had finally
discovered the secret of the Benetton computer system.
If the system was working, it would allow Schumacher to
make a perfect start. As soon as he hit the gas, the computer
would decide the correct engine speeds. This would be a serious
sporting crime, as serious as Olympic runners using drugs.
The Benetton team managers said that the banned program
had not been used; it was still on their computer after the ban
because it was difficult to remove it. The authorities were not
persuaded and made their worries public, but they took no more
action against the Benetton team.
Schumacher won first place in the next race in Hungary. In
Belgium, he again took first place, but this time there was trouble
about some changes to the body of the car he was driving. In
Paris, the World Council of the Grand Prix racing authorities
banned Schumacher for two races. But, at the same meeting, they
decided that the Benetton team had not cheated before the
German Grand Prix by removing part of the fuel pipe. They did
not say anything about the banned computer program.
Toscani made sure that his private letter found its way to the
newspapers. This was an important battle for Toscani. People
thought that he would lose, but as the news became public, it was
said that the share price of Benetton Group fell by nearly
8 percent on the Milan stock exchange. There is no proof that
this fall took place, but Toscani stayed. Within a year, however,
Palmeri had left the company again.
Silverstone, England, 1994
Benetton Formula enjoyed a good start to the racing season.
Schumacher was the fastest driver. As well as the fastest starts,
Benetton also had the fastest pit stops. No one could match
Briatore's men for speed.
In the first case, Benetton took Heinz Hartwich, a store owner,
to court for failing to pay for US$590,000 worth of clothes
which he had ordered and received. Hartwich claimed that
he should not have to pay because he had lost this amount
of money in sales through Benetton's advertising campaigns.
His lawyer said, "We want damages for loss of business. If
Benetton forgets the bill, then we will stop our case."
Benetton replied that although some German retailers claimed
they were selling less, the market share was the same. A few stores
had closed, but others had doubled their income. And, as someone
from Benetton said, Hartwich had failed to pay for goods in 1986
and 1989, when the advertising campaigns were less powerful, so
how could he blame the advertising for loss of income?
At the same time, Hartwich was carrying other brands in his
store, breaking the agreement he had with Benetton. He also put
up a sign telling people not to buy Benetton.
A number of similar cases were due to begin in other cities in
Germany. Hartwich was one of ten retailers from Germany who
had joined together to fight Benetton. They claimed to have
support from 150 retailers who operated 250 stores. Other
retailers formed a group to support Benetton. Both sides were
confident they would win, but the discontented retailers had the
initial advantage. They were fighting in Germany rather than in
an Italian court.
After the first part of the court case, the media strongly
supported the unhappy store owners. But Benetton's lawyers
were making an impression on the judge. He decided that the
retailers were using the advertisements as an excuse for not
paying for clothes that they had ordered but not sold. Benetton
won the case.
These were test cases for Benetton's global brand. The truth
was that people only accept shocking images when they feel
guilty because they are rich. Much of the Western world was
experiencing a recession, and this type of imagery only made
people who already felt bad feel worse. The lesson of the
experience was clear. The Benetton network would have to be
regularly "cleaned" in future.
Toscani was the winner in the disagreement with Palmeri, but he
was taking no chances after the anger over the "known soldier."
His fall and winter images, approved by Luciano, showed a
thousand faces, electronically treated to show the word "AIDS"
across the center of the picture. The campaign created little
negative reaction. Toscani, however, had not completely given in
to the people who criticized him. He photographed the latest
Benetton catalog in the Gaza Strip.
"I am not a salesclerk," Toscani told an audience of students in
Britain. "I do not know how to sell."
In Germany, United Colors of Benetton and 012 retailers
turned Toscani's words back against him. They connected the
timing of the David Kirby and HIV images and the "known
soldier" with their falling sales. They hired lawyers. They were not
interested if Toscani's images were important works of artthis
was strictly business. Five of them wanted US$3.5 million from
Benetton because they believed that the brand was stopping
people buying the clothes.
Toscani knew Luciano well. As one non-family member of the
business said, "If Mr. Benetton suspected for a second that recent
campaigns were causing losses, he would fire Toscani
immediately, even though he is a close friend."
Luciano, however, believed that the German retailers were
wrong and he was going to prove it.
Kassel, Germany, 1995
This process of "cleaning the network" had already begun. The
previous year had been a difficult one for the network, with bad
financial conditions and rising wool and cotton prices. Profits
were not growing. Luciano traveled, listened, and observed,
noting the comments of agents and store owners. Where
necessary, he made changes.
In the United States, there was no change in the agreement
between Benetton and its store operators, but the company took
more notice of their opinions. Benetton had 150 stores across the
United States, a lot fewer than the 700 it once had, but these
served a wealthier range of customers than Gap. There were 271
more "shops in stores." American Benetton retailers developed an
advertising campaign that featured the clothes rather than social
arguments and included TV and magazine material.
Benetton Group was returning to growth, with a 7 percent rise
in sales and a 6 percent rise in profits. The company had cut costs
and won victories in court. The previous year, the company had
successfully sold ten million new shares, but 71 percent of
Benetton Group was still in the hands of the four members of
the family.
New factories, designed by the Scarpas, opened at home.
Using new technology, they reduced production costs. The two
new factories at Castrette di Villorba employed only 640 people,
but they produced eighty million pairs of jeans, skirts, shirts, and
other clothes each year.
"I like the idea of a European manufacturing center," Luciano
said, "because it keeps the technology going."
He saw it as proof of his belief in the future.
Edizione, the family "strong box," was again growing. It owned
130 companies, including sports equipment manufacturers,
supermarkets, and restaurants. Edizione also included 75 percent
of 21 Investimenti, which had interests in companies making
cooking oil, coffee, and ice cream, and 100 percent of United
Optical. Edizione was the sixteenth largest company in Italy. Its
income was US$6.4 billion and it was still owned by Luciano,
Giuliana, Gilberto, and Carlo.
Enstone, Oxfordshire, England 1995
Luciano's son, Alessandro, loved car racing. He had tried and
failed to buy Lotus, and had taken his father's place as the family
representative for the Benetton team. Despite the trouble during
the previous season, Briatore had kept his position, with the help
of Schumacher, the courageous Johnny Herbert as his partner,
and the new Renault engine.
The results were very good for the team and both drivers.
Schumacher won in Brazil and Spain, and Herbert came second.
Schumacher won in Monaco and France, and Herbert won in
Great Britain. Schumacher won in Germany and Belgium, but
was given a one-race ban for his behavior. These wins helped
people to forget the questions about the Benetton team that had
been raised during the previous season.
Then Schumacher accepted US$38 million to leave Benetton
and join their rival, Ferrari. Tom Walkinshaw also left, to join the
Arrows team.
Briatore immediately signed Jean Alesi from Ferrari, an
enormously popular figure among the drivers.
Catena di Villorba, the Veneto, 1995
Luciano pulled a chair up to the shallow water.
"It's beautiful, isn't it?" he said.
This was Fabrica. Luciano and Toscani had developed the idea
of building a school for the arts here in the Veneto. There had
been many arguments about why Benetton had chosen to spend
US$20 million on this school, far from New York City or
London or Paris. What did they expect in return? Was it just a toy
for a rich man?
It was much more than that. Behind Fabrica was a clear
business purpose. Luciano, now a youthful sixty years old, had no
plans to retire, but he had plans for Fabrica and the Benetton
Foundation. He believed that such places had an economic and
practical purpose. Research organizations could give ideas to
people in the business, and could offer opinions on the less
successful things that Benetton did.
A journalist asked him what would be left of Benetton in
thirty years time. His reply was surprising.
"The school," he said. "There will always be the school."
There was another reason for opening Fabrica; it would
eventually take on the image-making role for the business. Even
Toscani could not continue forever, but there was no one person
who could take over from him.
to encourage better relations between different cultures. The
program would supply 130,000 schoolchildren and 16,000
teachers with books and pictures. The principle was that children
of different nations, taught young, would grow up to avoid the
kind of bad feeling that still existed.
Thirty minutes from Fabrica, in Ponzano, Toscani and Luciano
produced their spring and summer image. Luciano had had
experience of being a parent, romantic attraction, the end of a
marriage, and friendship. Now it was time to do madness.
A Town Called Corleone
The most ambitious project, however, was still at the planning
stage. "The Colors of Peace" was a program aimed at teachers in
elementary schools in Italy, Germany, France, Belgium, and Spain
This time Toscani photographed fifteen members of the family in a
smiling group. The difference between this and other family
groups was that everyone in this picture was wearing the tight
jackets that are used in mental hospitals to control violent patients.
As Luciano explained, "The idea was to show a united family,
and a family which, though it is not crazy, is also not too
serious . . . and how a certain type of madness can produce
great things."
Toscani's Colors magazine moved its offices from New York to
Paris. The latest magazine featured "war." The pictures included a
dead African with the top of his head blown off, and the legs of
somebody who had been hit by an exploding bomb. The
magazine, with these images of other people's suffering, was on
sale in Benetton stores. This led some photographers and other
people to question whether the horrors of war should be
connected with United Colors of Benetton and Sisley.
Toscani's spring and summer billboard campaign for the
United States showed an image of three human hearts, the same
Students at Fabrica were recommended by a network of top
art schools and other informed groups. By creating a special
group to develop Benetton's communications strategy, Luciano
would eventually get something back for the money he spent.
In Treviso, the Benetton Foundation gathered valuable
collections of books and papers. In France, a campaign was
started to raise money with the group SOS Racisme, which
fought against racism. In Italy, a similar campaign was started with
the Association for Peace. In India, D C M Benetton India Limited
started an AIDS information campaign on billboards, in schools,
and in the media.
color but labeled differently by race. This image was first shown
at the same time as the international SOS Racisme conference to
mark a United Nations day against racism. This was held at
Fabrica, with forty people from around the world.
Fabrica and Colors were still the wild parts of the Benetton
image-making process. Unlike the carefully designed public
image of the family in the jackets, this was where the true
creative "madness" was.
London, England, 1996
The golden age was over for Benetton in London and in cities
across the country. Gap stood where Benetton had been in
Hampstead High Street and on many similar sites. Two of
Benetton's biggest license holders had gone out of business
within two weeks of each other. One had run some of the best
stores in London, and had failed with losses of 400,000. The
other owed companies, including Benetton, 200,000. There
had also been arguments between the agent and the licensees. On
this occasion, there was no advertising campaign to blame, and
other British store owners were increasing their orders by
between 20 and 30 percent. It was time for Luciano to "clean the
network" in England.
and Zerotondo ranges, and a new range called "Mamma of
Benetton." There were video screens and spaces for art. There
were sheep. There was Luciano. He was patient, he was polite, and
he was exhausted.
Then he flew on again, satisfied that the network had been
cleaned, the business reinvented, and the brand safely moved on
from the days when protesters had attacked the stores.
The superstore which opened in the Scribner Building in
New York was slightly smaller than the one in London. Again,
there was a wide range of clothes, plus a cafe and a bookstore.
Again, the aim was to go forward with smaller numbers of larger
stores. Similar superstores were planned in Jeddah, Sao Paulo,
and Bucharest.
Corleone, Sicily, 1996
The first two sheep were yellow and blue and arrived by taxi.
They were followed by a third, this time pink, which got out of a
pink Cadillac. Luciano himself arrived shortly afterward in a
green taxi. He was wearing a brown jacket and dark pants, and a
green tie decorated with sheep. It was raining.
This was the scene at the opening of the new Oxford Circus
superstore, the largest Benetton store in the world. The three
floor, 1,600 square meter store stocked a range of United Colors
of Benetton and Sisley's men's and women's clothes, the
Undercolors underwear range, children's clothes from the 012
Giuseppe Cipriani was the leader of the town council, and he
wanted to rid Corleone of organized crime. He received one
warning soon after he was elected. The head of a cow was placed
on the doorstep of his girlfriend's house. A telephone call warned
him that his own head would be next.
The Corleonesi were the most powerful force in the Sicilian
Mafia. Of the 181 known Mafia "families," of which 5,000
members lived in Sicily, the Corleonesi were the most feared.
It was time for change. Cipriani wanted a new global image
for the town instead of the image created by movies like The
Godfather. He called in Oliviero Toscani.
Toscani and his assistants came to look around. Toscani made a
promise "not to sell a product, but to prevent people buying
another, the Mafia." The Mafia themselves were not amused
when one of Toscani's assistants approached a pretty girl in the
street and asked her to model for them. She was the daughter of
the local gang boss.
Toscani returned to Corleone to photograph the new spring
and summer United Colors of Benetton catalog using real
models on the streets of the town. He said that this was not just a
fashion exercise, but "witness to the cultural, moral, and
economic rebirth of Italy's Deep South." During his visit, he was
followed by newspaper photographers. He often shouted at
thembut he also kept checking that they were still there.
Later, after Toscani had left town, there were questions about
the value of the exercise. By using the Mafia image to advertise
its clothes, was Benetton not supporting the image that Cipriani
wanted to get rid of?
Whatever the answer, Cipriani, Toscani, and Benetton were
happy. For the first time, something had happened in Corleone
that the Mafia could not control.
The visit to Corleone raised another question about the
business and the brand. This was a question no one spoke, but a
small number asked in their minds. Was Benetton not just a
family, but the Family?
should there be? The police have broken the Mafia in Italy with
changes in the law and the use of the gun. Yes, there was a 'dark'
period when the business seemed to grow very fast... and this is
the kind of situation that sometimes involves the Mafia. But I am
absolutely sure that they didn't get involved with Benetton."
The families which practice organized crime in Italy have
done that for years. They started in a rural, southern atmosphere
of poverty, violence, and fear. The Benettons were the children of
a small businessman in the politically independent industrial
north. They had their own background of poverty, violence, and
fear in the years during and immediately after the Second World
War. In other ways they were not at all similar to the much
poorer, more violent, and more fearful villagers many hundreds
of kilometers away in the south.
One businessman who is close to the Benetton family, but does
not owe them anything, said, "My family are from Naples, and I
don't see a connection between Benetton and the Mafia. Why
The strategy of opening fewer, but larger new stores was
beginning to succeed. There were fewer end-of-season stocks
and more reorders. Benetton was doing more detailed research
into customer needs and paying more to its agents. Three
hundred and fifty new stores were scheduled to open in the
coming year.
There was also a change in the financial strategy of the
business. Some companies and networks were sold. At the end of
the year, Benetton had cash to spend for the first time in its
history and went shopping.
The year 1996 was a difficult one for Flavio Briatore and
Benetton Formula. Jean Alesi and Benetton failed to win a single
race during the season. However, Briatore agreed that Alesi
would remain as lead driver for the next season, partnered by the
former Benetton driver, Gerhard Berger.
Alessandro Benetton continued to represent the family, but
How had the Benetton Group grown so successful? How had
Luciano Benetton come from nowhere to build up a global
clothing organization?
When you came close to the business, however, the idea of a
connection between Benetton and the Mafia disappeared.
Benetton Group was only one of the 130 companies owned by
Edizione. Edizione and Benetton Group both published their
financial figures, which could be inspected by anyone. Most of
the companies were in private hands, but this did not suggest that
illegal private money controlled the organization. Instead, it
showed a typical Italian desire to keep control, rather than giving
it to shareholders.
Gilberto Benetton was taking a long, hard look at the future of
Toscani had also been driving; he had been involved in a
hundred-car highway accident. He climbed out of his Mercedes,
which was undamaged, helped some young people out of their
wrecked car, and then took several rolls of film before he
continued on his journey.
Toscani was here to photograph the fall and winter United
Colors of Benetton catalog. Again, he was using "real" models.
He photographed the kitchen staff wearing woolen hats, and
members of the design team with their jackets and jeans
unfastened to show their underwear. He photographed Gilberto,
the shyest of the three brothers, wearing a very large pair of blue
jeans. He photographed Luciano, standing outside his office,
wearing a red sweater, his hair colored green. Luciano seemed
happy to appear like this.
"People are taking notice of what is happening," he said, "and
that is good."
Melbourne, Australia, 1997
It was the first Grand Prix of the season. Alesi, despite warnings
by Briatore, ignored the Benetton team when they called him
into the pits to refuel. He continued driving and ran out of fuel.
Berger finished fourth.
Alesi and Berger did better in the next race in Brazil, where
Berger came second and Alesi sixth, but less well in Argentina. In
the San Marino Grand Prix at Imola, Alesi was fifth. In Monaco,
Berger finished ninth.
Briatore was worried. Unknown to Luciano and Gilberto,
he was trying to sell the team, even though he did not own it.
"This is not a job forever," he said. "There is a lot of pressure,
testing, racing, with no time for yourself."
Maybe the man who liked to be photographed in dark glasses
with famous people, and to surround himself with pretty girls,
was finding the job less exciting.
By the time of the Italian Grand Prix, Briatore was not in
control. The new manager for Benetton Formula was David
Richards, a trained financial specialist. Alessandro had handled the
deal with Richards, but under the eye of his Uncle Gilberto.
Alessandro was joined by his younger brother, Rocco, who
became commercial director of Benetton Formula. Gilberto had
cleaned the network.
"You need someone like Richards to run the team,"
commented one person close to the team, "someone who will
keep the engineers from spending too much money, make the
advertising people work, and keep the drivers happy. It's an
impossible job."
Within a year, it seemed that Richards agreed. In 1998, he left
the job. This left the youthful Rocco as manager of the Benetton
Formula 1 team.
Rocco's new job did not last long. As a result of increasing
costs and the failure to win races, Luciano and Gilberto
reconsidered the future of Benetton in Formula 1. In March,
2000, Benetton Formula was sold to Renault.
T h e M a i n Streets of the World
Fifth Avenue, New York City, United States of America, 1997
"The Salon," a series of readings and discussions, opened in the
cafe of the Scribner building. This combined superstore, cafeteria,
bookstore, and arts and cultural center brought in young writers
to talk about their work. In the cafe, books were sold on fashion,
exercise, health, and fiction.
Many people were deceived by the fact that Gap had nearly
doubled its number of stores across the US during the same
period that the number of Benetton stores had fallen by more
than half. Benetton was making more money in the United
States than it had made when there were twice the number of
The Shopping Street, Ponzano, the Veneto, 1991
Here in Ponzano, beneath the gardens, is an underground street,
lit by artificial light and lined with a range of stores. All these are
Benetton stores, and they run the length of both sides of the
street. This is the Shopping Street.
The lighting in the main street changes its appearance through
the "day." At "night," although it may be the middle of the day
above ground, and the middle of summer, the street is dark. The
windows of United Colors of Benetton, of Mega Benetton, Blue
Family, Benetton Man, Benetton Woman, Sisley, and 012 shine
out under a black sky full of stars.
Six times a year, plus a number of occasions when "flash"
collections are shown, these stores are hidden from general view.
The street becomes a stage to present future collections to eighty
agents and area managers from around the world. These include
agents from the United States, Europe, and Japan, as well as agents
from new developments such as Pakistan. They have come for a
show that takes place nine months before the actual selling season.
The show starts, the models appear, disappear, and reappear in
the clothes, and the agents go home again to hire space and
present the collection to their store owners. The store owners
place their orders through the agents, and the clothes are sold.
When the orders are received, the clothes are made and sent to
the stores.
The marketing catalog is also sent to the stores, with
photographs by Toscani and an introduction by Mauro
Benetton. The catalog contains suggestions to store owners
about sales methods: how to prevent regular customers from
waiting until the end of the season to buy at reduced prices; how
to sell slow-moving stock without waiting for the end-of-season
sale; and how to persuade customers looking for cut-price sale
clothes to visit the store more frequently and buy more clothes
at the full price.
The clothes go on sale and the store owners report back their
sales. Luciano and his team examine the results and send these to
Giuliana and her 200 designers, who create 8,000 styles a year
and are working on the next collection. Others are working on
the next show, and so the business continues. It is thirty years and
a long way from the time when Pierro Marchiorello called
Luciano with an urgent request for more stock, and Luciano and
Carlo drove up to Cortina with a car full of sweaters.
Benetton Group had been shopping. This time it bought 60
percent of Benetton Sportsystem, the sportswear and equipment
companies that belonged to Edizione. Benetton Group planned
to buy the remaining part of the company in the following year.
Under the control of Gilberto Benetton, Sportsystem had
developed separately from the other Benetton businesses. Now it
seemed logical to bring the two together. The sale was very
public. As the managing director of Benetton Group said, one
part of the group was buying from another, so they had to
guarantee fair play. Both sides appointed banks to value
Sportsystem and set a fair price.
The sale of Sportsystem raised cash, kept control of the
company within the family, and made Benetton Group bigger
and better able to grow, particularly in the United States. The
plan was to develop the existing brands and new sportswear in
parallel with United Colors of Benetton, Sisley, and 012.
New management carried out changes. Rollerblade's
operations were moved to The Prince factory in New Jersey; the
manufacture of ski boots moved to Nordica in northern Italy; the
manufacture of Kastle skis was given to other companies in Italy,
and to companies in Eastern Europe and the Far East.
The family decided that the name Benetton Sportsystem
should go because, as Luciano said, the old name was too close to
the name of Benetton. They kept the existing brand names such
as Nordica, Prince, Killer Loop, and Rollerblade, and created a
new name for the new range of Benetton sportswear that was
linked to all these brands. They called this simply "Playlife."
Hebron, the West Bank, Israel, 1997
Toscani was sending out mixed messages to the German TV crew
that was following him around Israel. They were asking difficult
questions when he least wanted to answer.
"Mr. Toscani," the German camera operator shouted, just as
Toscani was preparing for his next picture, "two years ago you
went to Gaza and took pictures of young Palestinians looking
happy and well-dressed in their Benetton clothes. Anyone who
has been to Gaza knows that in reality the people are poor and
unhappy. Should you sell T-shirts in this way?"
Toscani turned to the camera operator with a look of hatred.
"I think you should stop sitting in your armchairs and
watching TV," he said angrily, "and complaining about what
other people do. You should look in the mirror, not the TV Then
you'll realize how disgusting you are."
Toscani had come back to the Middle East to film "Enemies,"
the spring and summer catalog for United Colors of Benetton.
His messages of equal rights and peace among enemies was not
working here. This probably caused his bad temper toward the
camera crew, though he was endlessly patient with the Italian
crew that was also following him around.
The work was to present an encouraging story of ordinary
Jews and Palestinians ignoring their religious and political
differences, and living closely together. Toscani had filmed three
students, two Jews and an Arab, sharing an apartment. He
photographed a Jewish man who bought his newspaper every
week at a Palestinian newsstand. He photographed several Arabs
being shaved by a Jew with an open razor. Here in Hebron,
however, the place was full of Israeli "settlers" with guns, who
hated Palestinians. Toscani had to make up the shot of two
women friends, one Israeli and one Palestinian, by bringing in
two women who worked for an American news agency.
Now the Germans were upsetting him. Toscani decided to
photograph them too.
"Hey, you, get in the picture!" he shouted, pushing them into
place. "No, not the woman over there, you're too pretty. The
newspapers are ugly, UGLY!"
Then Toscani was gone, moving on, back to Jerusalem. He left
behind two groups of people who were still divided by the high
fence that stood between the old Arab town and the new Israeli
town. In the market, the store owners complained that this band
of visitors had taken their pictures without giving them a cent in
return. Toscani didn't apologize.
"I came here to capture an image of two friends," he said. "I'm
not interested in the rest. That's for journalists. I see the world in
a different way."
After Jerusalem, they flew out of the Middle East and back to
Paris, Venice, and Ponzano. The spring and summer catalog would
come and go, and the photographer would move onto the site
for fall and winter. Did Toscani feel any guilt that this catalog
presented a comforting and untruthful image of peaceful life?
This image would be well-received in the more fortunate parts
of the Arab world, whose governments said they supported the
Palestinians but did nothing to help them.
Benetton condoms had been manufactured by Okamoto
Industries Inc., and sold for many years in Japan. In Europe, too,
safe sex would now take the name of the family, the business, and
the brand. These were the new United Condoms of Benetton.
The new Benetton condoms were available in four varieties in
packages of six, designed to reduce embarrassment at points of
sale. They were manufactured under license by the Australian
company, Ansell International. After they were put on the market
in London, the plan was to introduce the United Condoms of
Benetton into France, Denmark, Greece, Russia, and Turkey.
ha Ghirada,Treviso, the Veneto, 1997
Playlife was created as the brand and the name to sell the new
clothes for the Benetton Group sports philosophy. This brought it
within the image-making control of Toscani, who had returned
from the heat and dust of Palestine and come to the local sports
center to take a set of pictures for Playlife.
Toscani chose twenty-four images, two of which would
represent each month of the year. This time, real models played
themselves, as well as modeling the clothes. Fisichella and Wurz,
the two new Benetton Formula 1 drivers, stood with models
wearing mechanics' clothing. Other Benetton and Sisley sport
teams featured in the pictures. Each month showed a sport in
which Benetton marketed the clothes, the equipment, and the
brand, from Formula 1 to motorcycling, skiing, and tennis.
The peaceful atmosphere at Fabrica had changed; it was a place
where things were happening. Fabrica had twenty-two untidy,
unshaven students. They came from many countriesfrom the
United States, Argentina, Germany, Spain, Wales, England, and
Ireland. They were given a ten-day test period, followed by three
months to a year's free housing, food, and transportation.
Carlo Spoldi was one of the people in charge. He was
concerned that the students were becoming lazy. He also feared
that, although they were all under twenty-five, their ideas were
already too ordinary; maybe they should lower the maximum age
to twenty.
The students had produced sixteen videos about drunk
driving, which were broadcast on the local TV station, and five
videos about racism for MTV Europe. They had also designed a
new logo and campaign for the Food and Agriculture
Organization of the United Nations. There were plans for
Fabrica books and a Fabrica band.
Fabrica offered the further education that Luciano never had.
But there was a commercial side to the place. It could develop
people who would take over when Toscani finally stopped
McDonald's and Coca-Cola were the biggest and best-known
global franchises, but neither company had a communications
school. This was Luciano's creation, and it made him different, in
the same way that the brand power of Benetton made the
business different from these traditional franchises. But, long after
this place had opened, even Luciano's local newspaper was still
calling him "the McDonald's of knitwear."
Toscani was here to talk about "Death," the new Colors magazine
that had just hit the newsstands of the world. The contents
included information about the causes and meaning of death
around the world. It also gave advice on how to prepare for death,
according to the country in which you might be killed
accidentally, murdered, kill yourself, or die from natural causes.
The magazine contained the familiar, product-free advertisements
for Sisley and United Colors of Benetton, and one for Diesel:
"Over ten styles of legwear, eight weights of cloth, twenty-four
different washes. They're not your first jeans, but they could be
your last. At least you'll leave a beautiful body."
Toscani was proud that no one else would advertise in this
Colors. He believed that death was probably the last forbidden
topic. People talked about sex, but death had a kind of forbidden
mystery.
"This is not advertising," he continued. "A company like
Benetton has to put money into research. Sony has to put money
into technical research, but at Benetton, technical research is not so
important." Luciano later explained to Toscani that Benetton did in
fact put a lot of money into technical research. Toscani continued,
"A sweater has two sleeves, wool is wool. A company like this must
be intelligent enough to put money into communications research
because the communications will add value to the product in the
future. The product is more or less the same. The difference is the
communications. I hope we sell a lot of sweaters so that we can
make the magazine. Luciano hopes so too. Benetton is doing
advertising for Colors, not the other way around."
wild man, but something in him broke through to these children.
The result was a set of pictures that communicated happiness
despite disability. The next Colors magazine was also being
prepared. This time the subject was "Fat." The advertisers did not
seem to mind this topic; the magazine sold space to Caterpillar,
Hugo Boss, Benelli, the Body Shop, and to Fabrica.
Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, 1998
Alexander Wurz, one of the two new drivers for the Benetton
racing team, opened the new superstore on one of the main
shopping streets in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. At 1,300 square meters,
this was the second largest Benetton store in the world after
The agent for the Middle East was Francesco della Barba, who
had been a director of Benetton in the United States. The
Benetton network in the Gulf had almost 200 stores. All of these
stores advertised the business and the brand in a part of the world
without a strong media presence. For the last twenty years,
wealthy Middle Eastern customers had spent their oil wealth in
the fashion houses of New York City, London, and Paris. The
growth of Benetton in this region was a result of the growth of a
Middle Eastern middle class. Things were slowly changing here.
To be the first and biggest on the main streets of this part of the
world meant that Benetton led its competitors.
However, in another part of the Middle East, Francesco della
Barba and a partner were taking Benetton onto the main streets
of some of the most unlikely cities.
Baghdad, Iraq, 1998
Toscani filmed the images for the fall and winter catalog at
St. Valentin, a home for disabled children in Germany. He was a
Ahmad Samha was a native of Syria. Like Luciano, he had
worked after school from an early age; at fifteen, he left school to
work full time on four sewing machines that he had bought with
his savings. When Francesco della Barba and Benetton came to
Syria in the mid-1990s in search of new agents, Samha owned a
factory that made clothes for Europe.
Samha knew how to work the system. He knew the local store
owners and helped Benetton to develop. Samha and his company
built up a chain of thirty-two stores in Syria and worked with
Benetton to supply all of these. Rich people, desperate for
Western fashions, flooded into the bright, clean Benetton stores.
This was a limited market, however, and Samha knew that
he could not sell more than about 400,000 pieces of clothing
each year.
Now, Samha and Benetton brought the same stores and happy,
smiling, foreign faces to the depressed streets of Baghdad. Here,
among the markets and chicken sellers, rich people stepped out
of their Mercedes cars and attended the opening of the latest
Benetton superstore. As they flooded into the new store, one of
only two in the country, Ahmad Samha had the opportunity to
examine his new customers.
Samha already had plans to take Benetton into Algeria and
Iran. At this opening, he was pleased to see that one customer
bought over 150 pieces from the United Colors of Benetton
range. She was the wife of Saddam Hussein.
The newest spring and summer campaign for United Colors of
Benetton was opened by a UN official. It was part of a two-way
exercise between Benetton and the United Nations.
The reason for this exercise was clear: both the United
Nations and Benetton needed to advertise their brands, and the
UN knew that Benetton was one of the few companies in the
world with the desire to put large amounts of money into big
communications projects. Benetton also had a special connection
with the UN which went back to the visit by a UNESCO
official to Toscani in Paris, and the first United Colors campaign
thirteen years earlier in 1985.
The United Colors of Benetton/United Nations campaign
featured on the billboards, buses, and bus stops of the United
States and Canada, and in superstores, stores, and newspapers
across the world. As well as the images, the spring and summer
catalog went out to the stores around the world, showing the
clothes modeled by the Arabs and Israelis who lived in Jerusalem
and the West Bank.
Luciano described the catalog as a witness to peace. He wrote
that people wanted to live, buy and sell, and fall in love, but they
exist in a world where bombs bring death to ordinary people.
Sometimes this happens when they are out doing the most
ordinary things, like shopping. These words, although true,
ignored the fact that the United Nations had banned commercial
activities in Baghdad.
On the main streets of new markets like Jeddah, Damascus and
Baghdad, Benetton aimed its products at a small but wealthy
group of customers. This helped to carry the business into new
places where it could grow. These new markets were not
constant, however, and there was always the risk that demand for
clothes produced in Italy would fall.
The business had to continue growing. In the United States,
this meant opening fewer but larger stores across the country, and
at the same time moving away from the wealthy few to the larger
cost-conscious market. Benetton needed a partner for this and
found one in Sears, the nationwide chain of department stores.
By July 1999, in 450 Sears stores across America, there were
1,800 "Benetton USA corners," selling a new, simple clothing
brand designed for the American market.
This was the latest twist in the story that began with the
unexpected success of a football shirt. It was nearly twenty years
since a single Benetton corner in Macy's had opened and closed
after only six months. Since that time, in addition to the network
of individual stores, nearly 300 Benetton "shops in stores" and
sport goods retailers had opened across America. Benetton
owned the famous Scribner building on Fifth Avenue, and
Luciano had been given an honorary degree in law from Boston
University. But Benetton was still not a powerful presence in
middle America. Luciano hoped he had found the partner
Searsto take them to the top.
Giancarlo Fisichella, a new driver for the Benetton team, was in
Rome to open the newest superstore. Like the others in New
York City, Jeddah, Leipzig, and London, and the superstores that
were going to open in Milan, Berlin, and Tokyo, this store carried
the full range of Benetton products.
The new Benetton team was performing well this season.
Fisichella was a tiny man, more like a professional horse rider
than a race car driver. The cars themselves had grown bigger and
bigger over the fifteen years since Benetton first entered
Formula 1. In a garage a few kilometers from the factory at
Ponzano, there was a full collection of Benetton Formula 1 cars.
The newest superstore was laid out on three floors in the
Piazza Venezia, an area of commercial and cultural importance. It
had everything for the customer and was open seven days a
week. The site was packed with people. Many of them were
visiting the capital city for the first time, as Luciano had done
thirty-eight years earlier. Just a few blocks away, there were still a
few shops owned and operated by the Tagliacozzos, where
Luciano once stood and dreamed about the future.
Benetton remained the key to the public idea of the family and
the brand, but Edizione was still the strong-box. Gilberto steadily
widened this family-owned company until Benetton Group sales
brought in less than half its total income. Edizione now owned
millions of dollars of property in New York City, Tokyo, Rome,
Venice, Milan, and Patagonia.
Gilberto wanted Edizione to include customer services not
only on the highways and at train stations, but also at airports.
He said that the company decided to use its experience in
retail in other areas because the service industry needed
improving. A central part of Edizione businesses was working
with customers.
Luciano was preparing for the opening of the first Playlife
store in Bologna. Fifty more would follow soon across Europe. In
addition to the Playlife offices, there was a 4,000 square meter
underground workspace, including two life-size Playlife stores.
Like Benetton franchisees, Playlife agents and franchisees could
come here to inspect the latest Playlife sport clothing, as well as
Rollerblades, Nordica skis, and Killer Loop snow boards. But
another economic recession was already starting. Was this the best
time to enter a market already crowded with companies like
Ralph Lauren Polo and Tommy Hilfiger?
"In moments of confusion, good ideas get even more
attention," Luciano said. "We know world markets. We know
young taste, and young people who practice sports. It will be
more than a product, it will be a way of seeing things. Beyond the
product we need to give a sense of something different. We will
create something around this brand."
So, with all these new plans, did he still see himself as a
clothing manufacturer?
"Yes," he said, "but maybe my children and grandchildren
won't."
Treviso, the Veneto, 1998
The former Dellasiega store in the town was not there now, but
there were still Dellasiegas in the local telephone books. This was
still a town of traditional stores and traditional customers. There
were still plenty of women in fur coats of the kind who, years
before, came into the store to be served by Luciano Benetton.
There were also the offices of Edizione Holding and 21
Investimenti. On the opposite side of the Piazza Crispi from the
United Colors of Benetton store were the offices of the
Benetton Foundation. The director was still Luciano's childhood
Luciano landed at Treviso Airport. He spent most of his time in
the air, and when he was not flying, he was shy and seemed to
keep his distance from strangers. He was alone; alone in his life. He
never seemed tired and he was always on the move. His face often
seemed expressionless, but his eyes were moving all the time.
Luciano was driven by car from the airport to the Villa
Minelli. His office was in the right-hand wing of the building,
next to the other managing director, Carlo Gilardi, and opposite
the offices of Gilberto and Carlo. He went home from here to
the house where he lived between Ponzano and Treviso, and he
would soon go back to the airport.
Less than a kilometer from the original factory, which was
now Giuliana's design center, was the modern house which the
Scarpas had built for Luciano and Teresa. Their four children had
lived there with their mother after Luciano had left. Then, one by
one, they too left home. Now Teresa continued to live there
alone, happily enough. Many people who worked in the business
did not even know that she was still in the house.
The business for which Luciano had given up his childhood
had also taken the place of family, lovers, and a small circle of old
friends. He was alone; that was the price of success for Luciano
Benetton.
Benetton, owned and run by Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto, and
Carlo, was the most successful family business and brand in the
world. The family also operated the world's most modern
clothing factory, near Treviso at Castrette di Villorba. They had
built the 190,000-square meter factory instead of closing down
and going overseas in search of lower employment costs. Many
people questioned the wisdom of this decision, as they always
questioned everything about Benetton. Now, however, other
global clothing companies were forced to move their factories
again, and Benetton was still here.
The images of United Colors covered the walls of the Villa
Minelli, the offices, and the design center, but Toscani's "Death
Row*" campaign had been a disaster in the United States and
the author of these images was no longer seen there.
From Ponzano, thirty thousand boxes of clothes were sent out
every day to stores at the far corners of the earth. They called the
place that controlled their stock "Big Charley." Only a handful of
people worked there. In Big Charley, the center of the operations
was a group of computer-controlled machines. There were three
kinds of machine. The first kind gave the second kind a box, and
the third kind showed the second where to put it. The second
type of machine put the boxes in the right place and then pulled
them off again, and the boxes were loaded for transportation by
* Death R o w : the part of a US jail where some prisoners are kept until they
are killed.
train, truck, ship, and air to Los Angeles, London, Crete, Dublin,
and Sarajevo. Together in action the machines made an amazing
sight.
These were the children. These machines were willing to
work all hours for the progress and success of the name of
Benetton. The first machine was the father, the second was the
child, and the third was the mother. The real children called them
"the family."
a person who reports on the financial health
of a business
an offer to do work, provide a service, or pay
a particular price for something
part of a large organization, often a store or
money that helps to build a new business
the activities involved in buying and selling
a person who gives business advice
a big company
to expand
to increase or grow
a person with special knowledge of a subject
a connection or a relationship between
people, organizations, ideas, or things
money which has been lent
to try to come to an agreement with another
a system which connects people,
organizations, or things together
a business aim
a business that is owned by two or more
a piece of work that needs knowledge, skill,
and planning
to print something and offer it for sale to the
a piece of paper that says you own a part of a
stock exchange a place where people buy and sell shares
to buy and sell
Before you read
1 What do you know about Benetton? Discuss these questions.
Then discuss them again after you have read this book. Find the
words in italics in your dictionary.
a Who started the company?
b What did they manufacture first?
c What were the features of the brand?
d What can you find in the Benetton range now?
e What is the company's logo?
f What strategies have helped the company to develop its global
image?
g Is retail an important part of the company's business?
h Who owns the stock in Benetton stores?
2 Find these words in your dictionary. Use them in the sentences
agent knit media racism site ski
a I'm
socks for my grandson.
b He's so famous that he can't escape from the
c This is the
of our new factory.
is still a problem in most countries.
e She's an
for language schools in Boston.
f We
every winter in Switzerland.
After you read
3 Who:
a gives Luciano a job?
b knits the first Benetton sweaters?
c is the financial brain of the Benetton family?
d designs the Tres Jolie label?
e becomes the first Benetton agent?
4 Answer these questions.
a Why are the first My Market stores so popular with young
customers?
b How do Tobia and Afra Scarpa help Benetton to meet the needs
of different customers?
c Luciano Benetton's first experience of the United States was a
shock. Why? What did he find out during that first visit?
5 Are these sentences true or false? Find the words in italics in your
a If you ban something, you agree to it.
b A billboard is used to advertise products in the street.
c An advertising campaign can use different media.
d A foundation is a type of house.
e A franchise gives someone a license to run a business.
f Sports cars are sometimes repaired in the pits.
g During a recession, the economy improves.
h Scientists use research to make new discoveries.
i Large companies sometimes sponsor sporting events.
j A superstore is a very small store.
k Information technology helps us to communicate more quickly.
6 Discuss why large organizations sponsor sports events and
sportspeople. How does this support help the organizations and
the sports teams?
7 Where does Benetton:
a open its first American store?
b open its first store in Eastern Europe?
c open the first two American superstores?
8 Why does Benetton get involved with Formula 1 car racing? What
does the company hope to gain?
9 Describe Toscani's first advertising campaign for Benetton. What is
unusual about it?
10 Imagine that you had the franchise to run a Benetton store in
America in the late 1980s. What problems might you experience?
11 Discuss advertising campaigns that have made an impression on
you. Why did you like or dislike them?
12 Discuss these questions. Find the words in italics in your
a Why do you think Toscani included condoms and a nun in two of
his images? How would the authorities in your country react to
the use of these in advertising?
b What features of clothing catalogs make you want to buy from
them?
13 What is Edizione? What is its relationship to the Benetton family?
14 When he faces difficulties, Luciano "cleans the network." What
does this involve?
15 Luciano defended Benetton's advertising by saying that the
advertisements showed reality and the company wanted to make
people think. Discuss your reactions to the Benetton advertisements
and Luciano's philosophy.
16 How is technology changing the way that manufacturers produce
their goods? How can it help them? What problems can technology
bring?
17 Most manufacturers make goods and then sell them. How is
Benetton's strategy different? How does the company present its
range of products to agents and retailers?
18 What is:
a Fabrica? What is its commercial purpose?
b Big Charley? What is its role in Benetton's operations?
19 Discuss your impressions of the Benetton family, the company's
organization, and its business methods. Would you enjoy working
for Benetton, do you think? Would you buy shares in the
company? Why (not)?
20 Write a newspaper report about Benetton. Describe the history of
the company and its main achievements.
21 "Can one do anything, use anything, to attract attention?" Argue
the case for and against Benetton's use of "images of reality" in its
22 Write about Benetton's association with Formula 1 car racing. Do
you think the association between Benetton and the sport has
been good for the company?
23 Describe the changes that took place in clothes retailing from the
time when Luciano Benetton started his company to the present
day. How have customers' buying habits changed? How can retail
organizations meet these changes?
24 What do you think of Benetton and its achievements? What do the
public recognize about the companyits clothes or its image?
How does Benetton compare with other large organizations that
you are familiar with?
25 Give your opinions of this book. Do you think it gives a fair
impression of Benetton? Which parts did you find particularly
interesting? Would you recommend the book to other readers?
Answers for the Activities in this book are published in our free resource packs for teachers, the
Penguin Readers Factsheets, or available on a separate sheet. Please write to your local Pearson
Education office or to: Marketing Department, Penguin Longman Publishing, 5 Bentinck Street,
London W 1 M 5 R N .
Penguin Readers Factsheets
T e a c h e rs n o t e s
by Jonathan Mantle retold by Susan Fearn
S U M M A R Y
he name Benetton is known for two reasons: it is one
of the most successful clothing companies in the
modern world and it is infamous for its shocking
advertising campaigns.
The success story starts in northern Italy towards the
end of the Second World War. Leone Benetton has a
bicycle rental business in the town of Treviso. He wants his
oldest son Luciano to study and become a doctor. After
Leone dies, the family is poor and Luciano decides to
leave school and get a job. He finds work in an traditional
clothing store but soon has his own ideas and involves the
rest of the family in starting a family clothing company
producing colourful woollen sweaters for people used to
wearing only dull colours. Within only 8 years the company
has taken on employees, built its own factory and is
producing 20,000 sweaters a year which it sells to
fashionable shops in Rome and Venice.
Over the next ten years Benetton goes from strength to
strength in Europe. Shops selling only Benetton sweaters
open in many Italian cities and by 1974 there are stores in
France, Germany and Belgium.
It is clear that at this stage the success of the Benetton
business lies in the strength of the family. Between them
the four Benetton children (Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto and
Carlo) have twelve children, but in 1975 Luciano meets and
falls in love with the 20-year-old Marina Salomon who
works in one of his shops. This causes personal problems
but the company continues to go from strength to
strength. After much research, Benetton opens its first
shop in the USA, in Manhattan, New York, where it attracts
some very high profile customers including Princess Diana
and Jackie Onassis. In 1982 Luciano is introduced to
Oliviero Toscani, the photographer who is to change of the
image of Benetton forever.
Although Benetton is growing very quickly, they are still
not big in America: they need a genuine international
image and for this reason in the early 1980s they decide to
sponsor Formula 1 motor-racing. This is followed by the
advertising campaigns for which the company becomes
famous. The photographs emphasize the international
importance of Benetton by showing striking images of
racial harmony. Even though these shock some people the
Pearson Education 2001
campaign is successful in bringing the name of Benetton
to the attention of people all over the world.
Luciano Benetton succeeded in turning the company he
started in the 1950s into one of the worlds most
successful businesses but he paid a high personal price.
He spent so much of his life working and travelling that he
lost touch with his family and friends. Would he do the
same thing if he had the chance to start his career again?
ABOUT THE BOOK AND THE AUTHOR
John Mantle is the first outsider to research the family and
the company in such detail. His other books include a
biography of the British writer and disgraced politician,
Jeffrey Archer and a book about the world famous
insurance company Lloyds of London.
BACKGROUND AND THEMES
The story of Benetton is the story of one familys progress
from a small business in provincial Italy to world
domination. One of the keys to their success has been the
strength of the family and the determination of the original
four brothers and sisters to remain personally involved and
in financial control of the business.
One of the issues raised by the book is the moral
responsibility of multi-national corporations in the postwar era. Benetton has deliberately, and often
provocatively, associated itself with social and political
matters that have no direct relation to its business of
selling clothes. Its advertising campaigns, which have
drawn the public attention to war, disease, death and racial
issues, have sometimes threatened to damage sales
figures and yet in the end have succeeded in publicising
the name Benetton throughout the world.
But Benetton could not have succeeded if a rapidly
increasing number of people in more and more countries
of the world had not been willing to pay high prices for
fashionable clothes. A clothing empire on this scale would
have been inconceivable at any other time in history.
Communicative activities
The following teacher-led activities cover the same sections
of text as the exercises at the back of the Reader and
supplement those exercises. For supplementary exercises
covering shorter sections of the book, see the
photocopiable Students Activities pages of this Factsheet.
These are primarily for use with class readers but, with the
exception of the discussion and pair/groupwork activities,
can also be used by students working alone in a self-access
ACTIVITIES BEFORE READING THE BOOK
Students work in pairs or groups and discuss these
(a) What do students associate with the name Benetton?
(b) What kinds of clothes are they famous for? Do any
students in the class wear Benetton clothes?
(c) What other enterprises is Benetton involved in?
ACTIVITIES AFTER READING A SECTION
Put students into pairs and ask them to discuss these
(a) Why do you think the book starts with a day in the life of
Luciano Benetton in the present day? Why doesnt it
start with Badoere, northern Italy April 7, 1944?
(b) What factors do you think contributed to the success of
Benetton clothes in the early days?
(c) Do you think it would be possible in the twenty-first
century for a family to create a business like Benetton?
1 Think about and then role play one of these situations.
(a) Luciano and Marina trying to decide what to do
about their future.
(b) Luciano telling his wife Teresa about his affair with
(c) Luciano reassuring his brothers and sisters that the
change in his personal circumstances will not affect
2 Imagine the conversation between Luciano and Marina
after they had been attacked for the second time in two
months.
Student discuss these questions in pairs or groups.
(a) What do you think of the idea of a company like
Benetton associating itself with a high-profile sport like
motor-racing?
(b) What was the companys prime motive? To sell clothes
or to alert the world to a serious social issue?
Imagine you are Luciano Benetton. Look back over the time
since you started Benetton and make two lists:
Things Im happy about or proud of.
Things I regret or am ashamed of.
ACTIVITIES AFTER READING THE BOOK
Benetton Trivia Quiz
Students work in pairs or small groups. Give each group a
copy of this quiz and set a time limit say 3 minutes for
them to answer the questions without looking at the book.
Then give them a further 3 minutes with the book to refer
to.
What was the name of Luciano Benettons father?
What was the name on the label of the first
collection of Benetton sweaters?
3 What was the name of Luciano Benettons fourth
4 Where in the USA was the first Benetton shop
opened?
5 What international sport did Benetton sponsor?
6 What was the name of Oliviero Toscanis first
advertising idea?
7 Who left Benetton to work for Citibank in 1990?
8 What was the name of the child Luciano and
Marina had together?
9 What was the name of the European schools
program which encouraged good relations between
different cultures?
10 What sort of car did Luciano Benetton arrive in
when he opened the new London superstore in
11 What was the name of the Benetton
communications school?
12 What was the name of the place that controlled the
Benetton stock at the factory in Ponzano?
It will be useful for your students to know the following new words. They
are practised in the Before You Readsections of exercises at the back
of the book. (Definitions are based on those in the Longman Active
Study Dictionary.)
agenda (n) the list of subjects to be discussed at a meeting
brand (n) a type of product made by a particular company
global image (n) the opinion that people have around the world of an
organization, etc
knit (vb) to make clothing out of wool
logo (n) a small design that is the official sign of an organization
manufacture (v) to make large quantities of goods to be sold, using
achines
media (n) organizations such as newspapers, radio and television that
provide information for the public
racism (n) unfair treatment of other people because they belong to a
different race from your own
range (n) a number of things which are different but of the same
retail (n) the sale of goods in shops to customers for their own use
site (n) a place where a building is
ski (vb) to move on long thin pieces of wood or plastic fastened to your
stock (n) a supply of a particular type of thing that a shop has to sell
strategy (n) a well-planned series of actions for achieving an aim
ban (vb) to say that something must not be done
billboard (n) a large sign used for advertising
campaign (n) a series of actions designed to achieve a particular result
foundation (n) the basic idea, etc that something develops from
franchise (n) permission to sell a companys goods or services
pits (n) the place next to the track in car racing where cars can be
repaired or take on fuel
recession (n) a period of time when there is less trade, business actity
and wealth
research (n) serious study of a subject to discover new facts
sponsor (vb) to give money to a sports event, etc
superstore (n) a very large shop that selss many different types of
(information) technology (n) the use of electronic processes for
storing information
authorities (n) the people and organizations that are in power in a
catalog (n) a book containing pictures and information about the goods
condom (n) a thin rubber bag that a man wears over his penis when
nun (n) a member of an all female religious group
Publ is hed an d dis tri but ed by Pe arso n Educa tion
Fa cts he et w r itten b y Si mo n Haine s
Fac tshee t ser ie s dev elop ed by Lo uis e Jame s
Photocopiable
Students can do these exercises alone or with one or more
other students. Pair/group-only activities are marked.
1 Read the Introduction on page v, then close the book
and fill the gaps with verbs and adjectives from the list
below. You may need to change the form of the verb.
build / charm / produce / shock / start /
Adjectives extraordinary / hard / public / real-life /
shocking / successful
Benetton: no name has such an ability to 1 (v)...............
and 2 (v)............... .
Benetton is the 3 (a) ............... story of an 4 (a)
............... Italian family and the organization they 5 (v)
............... . Faced by poverty in a country ruined by the
Second World War, the Benetton family 6 (v) ...............
one of the most 7 (a) ............... businesses in the
world. Today they 8 (v) ............... 8,000 stores in 120
countries. They 9 (v) ............... (also) some of the most
10 (a) ............... advertising images ever seen. This is a
story of 11 (a) ............... work and success, invention
and risk-taking and of terrorism, 12 (a) ...............
anger, and court cases.
(g) The Benettons had so many orders for their clothes
that they needed a new factory.
Answer these Why questions from the seven sections of
(a) England, 1962: Why did Luciano go on a 10-day tour
of Britain?
(b) Belluno, 1964: Why did Luciano want the new factory
to be beautiful?
(c) Cortina dAmpezzo, 1966: Why did the shop in
Cortina sell only small size sweaters?
(d) Padua 1967: Why did the two shopkeepers try to
persuade Luciano not to open a My Market shop in
Padua?
(e) Ponzano. 1969: Why did Lison Bonfils think that
Benetton should open a shop in Paris?
(f) New York City, USA, 1970: Why did Luciano decide
not to open a shop in the USA?
(g) Ponzano, the Veneto, 1972: Why did Benetton buy
Sisley in 1974?
Now open the book again and check your answers.
2 Why do you think Benetton likes to keep tight control
of information about the company.?
Put these events from Chapter 4 in the correct order.
(a) The Manhattan Benetton opened.
(b) Luciano and Marina were attacked in their house.
(c) Luciano met the photographer Oliviero Toscani.
(d) Luciano moved out of the family home and moved in
with Marina.
(e) The first Benetton annual report was published.
(f) Benetton opened their first shop in London.
(g) Luciano and Marina were attacked in their car.
Activities while reading the book
Put these events in the early life of Luciano Benetton in
the correct order.
(a) Luciano left school and got a full-time job.
(b) Luciano sold newspapers on Treviso station before
(c) Luciano went to work in the Dellasiegas clothing
(d) Lucianos father died.
(e) The Americans accidentally bombed the town of
Treviso.
(f) The family moved to Santa Bona
Are these statements True or False?
(a) Luciano wanted to change the way people bought
clothes.
(b) In the 1950s Italians all wore bright colourful
(c) Luciano sold his bicycle to get money for the knitting
machine.
(d) The family sold their first sweaters through
Dellasiegas shop.
(e) Dellasiegas store was the first shop to sell Benetton
(f) The Tagliacozzo business refused to buy any
Benetton sweaters.
1 Complete these sentences.
(a) The reason Benetton decided to sponsor Formula
1 motor-racing was to ...
(b) To help the company to grow, Palmeri hired
managers who ...
(c) By 1983 the company had factories in Italy and
in ...
(d) The reason Macys closed their Benetton section
after only 6 months was that ...
(e) The idea that there was an Italian Mafia in
Benetton came about because ...
(f) Luciano contacted Oliviero Toscani because he
wanted him to ...
2 Who or what are/were?
(a) Tyrell
(b) Palmeri
(c) Invep and Olympias
(d) Bruno Zuccaro
(e) Macys
(f) Francesco de la Barba
1 Are these sentences True or False?
(a) Toscani used professional models for the All the
Colors in the World image.
(b) The All the Colors campaign won a magazine
prize in South Africa.
(c) The All the Colors campaign helped the company
to expand in America.
(d) Palmeri wanted to sell 50% of the Benetton
company on the stock exchange.
(e) When the Benetton car won the race in Mexico
City, Luciano felt very lonely.
(f) Luciano was happy about the idea of selling shares
in the company.
(g) Benettons advertising campaign in the spring and
summer of 1986 offended Jewish people.
Answer these questions.
(a) Why were pictures of clothes taken out of the new
series of advertisements in 1989?
(b) Why was the photograph of a white man and a black
man chained together taken down in Britain?
(c) What went wrong with the relationship between
Luciano and Marina?
(d) What percentage of Benetton profits went to outside
shareholders?
(e) What was the serious purpose behind the condom
campaign?
(f) Which Benetton advertisement shocked the Pope?
(g) What was so shocking about the photograph of the
new-born baby?
Complete these sentences with the correct verb in the
appropriate form.
(a) The new Benetton images showing reality were ... in
many countries.
(b) The campaign ... to damage the image as well as the
sales of the company.
(c) In London a group of people ... against the image of the
man with AIDS by going into a Benetton shop and
throwing the clothes on the floor.
(d) Toscani did not understand why his reality pictures ...
(e) In Germany Benetton helped fight AIDS by ... large
amounts of money.
(f) Palmeris rejoining Benetton allowed Luciano to ... into
politics. He ... Treviso
(g) In February 1995 Benetton had to ... a fine of $32,000
because of its shocking advertising campaign.
Correct these statements
(a) After the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, Schumacher
was banned from racing for the rest of the season.
(b) In Germany Schumachers car caught fire.
(c) A group of Italian Benetton retailers tried to prove that
Toscanis advertising campaign had damaged their
sales.
(d) In the test cases the media and the judge supported
the angry store owners.
(e) By 1995 only 7% of the Benetton Group was owned by
the four members of the family.
(f) Alessandro Benetton bought the Lotus car company .
Complete these sentences.
(a) An image of three human hearts was used for ...
(b) The Benetton superstore which opened in London in
1996 was ...
(c) At this time Benetton decided that in future the
business should have ...
(d) The leader of Corleone wanted a new image for his
town, so ...
(e) After the 1996 campaign in Sicily, people began to
wonder whether ...
(f) In 1996 the Benetton racing team ...
(g) Benetton Formula 1 was sold to Renault because
3 Match the names ag with the appropriate descriptions
ivii.
(a) the Shopping Street
(b) Sportsystem
(c) Playlife
(d) Enemies
(e) Ansell International
(f) Carlo Spoldi
(g) the McDonalds of knitwear
(i) the Benetton catalogue for spring and summer
(ii) one of the people in charge of Fabrica
(iii) the Australian company that made the new
Benetton condoms
(iv) the name a local newspaper gave to Luciano
(v) company owned by Edizione
(vi) the place where new Benetton collections are
shown to agents and managers from around the
(vii) Benettons sportswear range
(a) Toscanis magazine Colours advertised Benetton and
Sisley clothes.
(b) The largest Benetton superstore in the world was in
Saudi Arabia.
(c) Ahmad Samha helped Benetton open new stores in
Syria and Iraq.
(d) Only the wealthy people in the Middle East could afford
to buy Benetton clothes.
(e) Benetton USA corners were new Benetton shops in
which sold clothes specially designed for the American
Write one of these letters.
A letter to Benetton saying why you would be a
suitable person to work for the company.
A letter to Benetton complaining about one of the
advertising campaigns you have read about in the
Published and di st ributed b y P ear son E ducat ion
Factsheet written by Simon Haines
F act sheet s eri es devel oped b y L ouise J am es
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