A FAMILY AFFAIR-BENETTON.

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In the mid-1950s, Guliana Benetton made her elder boy Luciano a multi-coloured pullover. “It was the pullover which started the whole thing”, Luciano tells me as we sit in his villa near Treviso in north-eastern Italy, where he was born. “The colours were more exciting than the ones normally used in the men´s sweaters at that time: I saw that my friends liked it and I thought that it had marked potential”. And so Benetton was born. The bright, vibrant colours in wich the original sweater was knitted became its trade mark. Today the gigantic multinational clothing empire is one of the world´s biggest suppliers of casual clothes.

In the 1960’s the two younger brothers, Carlo and Gilberto, joined Giuliana and Luciano to build what is probably the most remarkable family venture of the late 20th century, a corporation which has now diversified into banking, supermarkets, sporting equipment, restaurants and Formula One racing cars. Of the four founders, Carlo, the youngest, is the production director of Benetton Group worldwide. He also supervises the sheep ranches in Patagonia where ten per cent of Benetton wool is produced. Gilberto, vicepresident, is the financial expert. Giuliana is the design director, the creative genius behind Benetton clothes. The eldest, Luciano, is the president of Benetton Group and responsible for the company´s long-term and global strategies. .
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The firm´s success depends on a family structure which is now rare in Italy and rest of Europe. Luciano is convinced that Benetton could never have taken off without the family partnership. “The crucial pillars of the operation were my sister and two brothers” he says. “Undoubtedly, the success of this relationship depended on a division of work and on our total trust in what each of us is doing”.