Luisa Spagnoli
Manufacturing company established in the early 1930s by the Italian entrepreneur Luisa Spagnoli.
At the beginning it produced only outer knitwear with the brand Angora Luisa Spagnoli. After twenty years of success, in 1952 the brandname was changed to its current form, while production was expanded to include women’s clothing and a younger line created in the early 1990s by Nicoletta Spagnoli, the great-grand-daughter of the founder. Luis Spagnoli’s genius and organizational skills were not originally applied to the fashion industry, but to chocolates and candies. Before breeding angora rabbits in the garden of her villa in Umbria, she had started her brilliant career in 1919 launching one of the most important brands of Italian chocolates, Perugina. But the success of the famous Bacio (Kiss) was not enough. Taking angora wool as her starting point, she tried a career in fashion. In a short time her designs became very popular in Italian shops.
1935: Luisa Spagnoli
When she died in 1935, her brand was already very famous in the USA and the company, now in the hands of her son Mario, and then Lino Spagnoli, had already made the big leap. Since the opening of the first shop in Perugia in 1940, the company set a record for direct stores in Italy, which numbered 140 by the year 2000. Mario Spagnoli’s daughter had her grandmother’s name and renewed her fame, but in a completely different field. A writer, journalist and leading member of the socialite and intellectual life of the Rome of the 1960s and 1970s, she is the author of La Lunga Vita di Giorgio De Chirico, published by Longanesi, a delicious and graciously irreverent book about the private life of Giorgio De Chirico.
Turnover of 106 million dollars (+9.4%) and a net profit of 6.6 millions. The chain of shops consisted of 145 sales points in Italy’s largest cities. The company employs 700 people, 550 of whom work in the shops.
The daughter
The company reorganized itself to reach a younger audience. Nicoletta Spagnoli, general manager and great-grand-daughter of Luisa Spagnoli, the company’s founder, said: “In the beginning we had some difficulties about changing our products which have always been designed for a traditional public. Then, we started to implement a gradual renewal and the younger public got our message.”
“Changing under the banner of tradition,” is the Spagnoli motto: no acquisitions, no Stock Exchange, no new managers. From some viewpoints, this makes it an unusual case in the modern fashion business in Italy. Début of a perfume and the opening of a shop in New York.
Knitwear continued to be the company’s flagship, to which have been added coordinated accessories. The company’s transformation also involved the restyling of 145 sales points.
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