“We have become strongly dependent on millennials”, says Gucci CEO

Marco Bizzarri, President and CEO of Gucci, is the protagonist of the second episode of “Polimoda Duets”, a series of interviews produced by Italian fashion school Polimoda for its social media channels. The first interviewee was Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović.

In the video, Bizzarri comments on Gucci’s new wave of success under Creative Director Alessandro Michele. The label has been Kering’s main driver in recent times, with sales rising by a third to over 8 million euros and operating profits jumping 54 percent to nearly 3.3 billion euros last year.

Bizzarri noted that the brand’s business strategy, aesthetic and target audience have changed considerably after Michele started his tenure. The brand now bets on a blend of luxury and streetwear to cater for a younger consumer, as well as on compelling storytelling suited for the age of social media. “The Gucci customer has changed radically over the last 4 to 5 years because we have become strongly dependent on millennials, who are warming to the lexicon. Alessandro [Michele] turns to this new generation as well as Generation X which is the one that is growing the most in the last period”, said the CEO.

Bizzarri also thinks the company was “lucky” to make such a change at a time when the rest of the fashion industry was “quite sleepy”. He said: “there was nobody that really tried to change the way things were being done”.

Aware that trends come and go, Bizzarri said he doesn’t expect Gucci to keep growing at 40 percent a year, as it’s not “realistic”. However, he thinks the brand’s new aesthetic is “solid” enough to sustain satisfactory growth for many years to come.

Watch the interview in full here:

Image: Gucci Facebook