Giorgio Armani

Trivia

• Sales of the Armani-Group in 1994 amounted to 1270 billion Lira ($787 million), up 12.4% from 1993.
• Garments accounted for about 850 billion Lira ($527 million), and accessories for about 420 billion Lira ($260 million). In 1996, the group sales, including sales from licensed products rose to about 2000 billion Lira ($1.3 billion).
• The Armani-Group also includes the sportswear company Simint, which handles all of Armani's informal lines. Armani himself holds 53% of the Simint assets.
• Simint was rated the best perfoming stock at the Milan exchange, with an annual increase of 219% with respect to the stock price.
• While Simint produces the Armani Jeans line, the Armani Junior label and the Emporio Armani men's wear, the Emporio women's clothes are produced by the Antinea (sales in 1996: 150 billion Lira), a 100% Armani offspring.
• Giorgio Armani S.p.A. develops the Armani labels.
• In 1993, Giorgio Armani S.p.A. showed a 30% growth in sales to 695 billion Lira ($442 million), thus doubling its sales figures of 1990.
• Two years later sales were at 960 billon Lira ($590 million), increasing another 25% to 1200 billion Lira ($778 million) in 1996.
• Pre-tax profits for the Giorgio Armani S.p.A. marked 325 billion Lira ($211 million).
• The biggest export market for Armani is the United States, where Armani labels are sold at 12,000 points of sale.

Quotes

• "At this point I think of myself more as an entrepreneur than a designer. This is my life’s work and I’m more passionate about it than ever."
• "It would be very hard for me to do things somebody else’s way."
• "The long and short of it for me is that the entrepreneur is the one who at the end decides yes or no and I like that even though it’s a lot of responsibility."
• "With fashion you have to renew yourself…you’re only as good as your last collection."
• "In this business you can’t have a destination, an arrival point. Otherwise your competitors will overtake you, or you become complacent."
• "Anything that helps to prevent the spread of HIV in Africa must be encouraged."
• "The best way to make a contribution in fashion is to promote the idea that a fundamental interest in preserving the environment is itself fashionable."
• "It is a fact that, in the West, we live in a capitalist society, but that does not mean that we cannot be guided by the idea of a social conscience in our work. Yes, fashion design requires consumers to consume, but we can do out bit for society by running our companies in a socially responsible way, and by creating products that promote respect for social and environmental issues."
• "We children didn’t have many chances to daydream. It was wartime. There were very real, everyday problems. I didn’t have time to think about my dreams for the future. We were concerned with certain, very basic things: eating, getting cheap schoolbooks, and being able to go to the cinema on Sundays."
• "At the moment we are perfectly able to finance our projects without going onto the stock market to raise capital. If we were to become a listed company, I would have to be constantly justifying certain expenses to my shareholders, expenditures that are sometimes absurdly enormous but which can produce an enormous return. And I don't see why I should."