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Ermenegildo Zegna Group wants to make Tom Ford a top 10 global luxury brand.
“We are excited to build on Tom’s legacy to show the brand’s full potential ahead,” said chairman and chief executive officer Gildo Zegna on Tuesday at the group’s Capital Markets Day, which was broadcast live from the New York Stock Exchange (Zegna started NYSE listing in December 2021.)
Womenswear, accessories and shoes will be the main growth drivers to achieve that goal. Menswear currently represents the lion’s share of the business, at 70 per cent of sales. Expect store openings, notably in APAC and Europe: the brand plans to double its store count, to 100 in total, as well as renovate existing spaces. The brand has already confirmed locations to open new flagships in Beijing, Singapore, Rome and St. Moritz, Tom Ford fashion CEO Lelio Gavazza said. New product categories including home — think Tom Ford Casa — and fine jewellery are also on the table, as well as women’s made to measure.
Tom Ford Fashion’s sales reached €139 million in the five months under the Zegna stewardship, meaning revenue surpassed €300 million in 2023, according to Gavazza. The brand expects to grow its revenues by more than 10 per cent compounded annual growth rate in the medium term. “We need to do the things step by step because luxury brands need to be nurtured and developed in a sustainable and healthy way,” Gavazza said. Zegna Group has delivered solid results for the third quarter, with revenues up by 20.8 per cent year-on-year to €431 million.
Ford founded the brand in 2005 with Domenico De Sole, entering a manufacturing partnership with Zegna early on and launching womenswear in 2010 – “with a famous show in the New York store with 100 guests that set up the base for the future of the brand, exclusivity and high end positioning”, Gavazza noted. In 2022, Tom Ford stepped back from his namesake brand, and Estée Lauder Companies completed the acquisition of Tom Ford on 28 April 2023 in a deal valued at $2.8 billion, with the ready-to-wear produced under licence by Zegna Group, who also own Thom Browne. Zegna Group became the long-term licensee for all Tom Ford men’s and women’s fashion as well as accessories and underwear, fine jewellery, childrenswear, textiles and homeware.
Gavazza stepped in as CEO in September, just days before creative director Peter Hawkings’s debut show in Milan. Hawkings worked alongside Ford for 25 years, and while the show was well received, critics couldn’t help but note that Ford’s influence remained strongly felt. “Ford’s codes, ‘of glamour, sexiness, elegance, and beauty’ are his own codes,” wrote Vogue’s Nicole Phelps in her review.
“In terms of positioning, we are at the top of the luxury pyramid. We are positioning in the segment that we call absolute luxury,” Gavazza said. “When I look at the timeless segment, you mainly have specialists in leather goods and ready-to-wear. While the positioning where Tom Ford is, we can easily extend into ready-to-wear and leather goods, but also into fashion.”
He went on to highlight the bestselling products including the Tom Ford suit in menswear “the only one you can recognise from a distance”, according to Gavazza and, in womenswear, the Padlock sandals, the velvet tuxedo and evening dress. “These are the icons where we are going to build the future expansion of the brand.”
Category expansion is also a possibility. “The expansion can go in children’s clothing and accessories, in home and design products, as well as jewellery. We can expand what we have today — a kind of bijouterie — in fine jewellery with gold and diamond. That is something that, given my experience, may be on the pipeline in the near future.” He joined Tom Ford Fashion from LVMH-owned jeweller Bulgari.
Tom Ford benefits from being in an integrated group, notably on the manufacturing front, according to Gildo Zegna. “Take made to measure: it’s our ‘Formula One’. We are leaders of this project. We put this at the advantage of Tom Ford from the beginning and Tom Ford has an important made-to-measure business. We can create a made-to-measure reality also in womenswear.”
“We have in our hands a gem in the rough that we need to expand and we need to make it happen,” Gavazza concluded.
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