Quite a lot of brands went into Chapter 11 over the last couple of years. Many fashion and retail brands were among those and licensing models were thought to be the easy solution to revive those brands.
Recently, Reuters published an interview with the CEO of Cerruti.
The famous fashion house went bust in 2004. Here are some facts from the interview:
- Cerruti Chief Executive Florent Perrichon, a former LVMH executive, is ambitious to bring sales to 400 million by 2014.
- In 2009, Cerruti made an operating loss of 4 million euros, but this year the deficit should be smaller, in spite of higher marketing expenses, and the company remains on track to break even by 2012, he said.
To put things into perspective, Cerruti is one of the oldest and best known fashion brands. Giorgio Armani got his start there.
Clearly, brand licensing is not a quick and easy fix.