Benetton Group
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| Società a responsabilità limitata | |
| Industry | Fashion |
| Founded |
Ponzano Veneto, Italy (1965) |
| Founder | Luciano Benetton |
| Headquarters | Ponzano Veneto (TV), Italy |
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Area served
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Worldwide |
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Key people
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| Products | |
| Revenue | 1.529 billion Euro (2015) |
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Number of employees
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7,714 (2015) |
| Website | www |
Benetton Group S.r.l. (correct Italian pronunciation: [benetˈton]; often mispronounced [ˈbɛːnetton] or [benetˈtɔn]) is a global fashion brand, based in Ponzano Veneto, Italy. The name comes from the Benetton family who founded the company in 1965. Benetton has a network of about 5,000 stores in the main international markets.
In 1963, Luciano Benetton, the oldest of four children, was a 30-year-old salesman in Treviso. He saw a market for colourful clothes, and sold a younger brother's bicycle in order to buy his first second-hand knitting machine. His initial small collection of sweaters received a positive response in local stores in the Veneto region, and soon after he asked his sister and two younger brothers, Gilberto and Carlo, to join him. In 1965, the entity known as the "Benetton Group" was formed.
In 1966, the Benettons opened their first store in Belluno and three years after in Paris, with Luciano as chairman, his brother Gilberto in charge of administration, their younger brother Carlo running production, and Giuliana as a chief designer.
The company's core business remains their clothing lines: United Colors of Benetton, and Sisley.
The Group has a network of about 5,000 stores around the world.
The company is known for sponsorship of a number of sports, and for the provocative and original "United Colors" publicity campaign. The latter originated when photographer Oliviero Toscani was given carte blanche by the Benetton management. Under Toscani's direction, ads were created that contained striking images unrelated to any actual products being sold by the company.
These graphic, billboard-sized ads included depictions of a variety of shocking subjects, one of which featured a deathbed scene of a man (AIDS activist David Kirby) dying from AIDS. Others included a bloodied, unwashed newborn baby with umbilical cord still attached, which was highly controversial. This 1991 advert prompted more than 800 complaints to the British Advertising Standards Authority during 1991 and was featured in the reference book Guinness World Records 2000 as 'Most Controversial Campaign'. Others included a black stallion covering a white mare, close-up pictures of tattoos reading "HIV Positive" on the bodies of men and women, a cemetery of many cross-like tombstones, a collage consisting of genitals of persons of various races, a priest and nun about to engage in a romantic kiss, pictures of inmates on death row, an electric chair, an advert showing a boy with hair shaped into the devil's horns, three different hearts with "black", "white" and "yellow" written onto them (from March 1996), and a picture of a bloodied T-shirt and pants riddled with bullet holes from a soldier killed in the Bosnian War (this one appeared in February 1994). Most of the advertisements, although not all, had a plain white background, and in most the company's logo served as the only text accompanying the image.
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Wikipedia