How the sale of Tom Ford will make Zegna's business thrive

Fashion is like a European royal court, where everyone is related to everyone, and the intimate relationships between brands, creatives, executives, and manufacturers are always closer and less apparent than one might imagine on the outside. It is through these relationships that, in 2023, Estèe Lauder's acquisition of Tom Ford may end up benefiting the Zegna Group. When Ford's empire was purchased last year for $2.8 billion, in fact, the very Zegna Group, which owns 15 percent of Ford's shares, will move from producing Tom Ford's menswear to producing and distributing virtually every item or category on which Ford's name is found, minus eyewear, which will continue to be produced by Marcolin, and fragrances and beauty, which will remain in the hands of Esteè Lauder. In short, Zegna has acquired all of Tom Ford's fashion operations - just the richest gain for a group that, straddling the crucial year of its IPO, has been able to expand with astonishing speed.

This transaction is the first to take place since the IPO - but even before this important step, the Zegna Group had been growing through major strategic acquisitions. Back in 2018, it was Thom Browne in which the group had acquired a majority stake. Last year, on the other hand, the Zegna Group and the Prada Group together acquired majority stakes in the cashmere company Filati Biagioli Modesto, and then increasingly expanded its textile supply chain, acquiring majority stakes in Tessitura Ubertino, one of the country's leading producers of luxury womenswear fabrics; Pelle Tessuta, which instead specializes in leather; and Cappellificio Cervo, a historic Biella business. The idea would seem to be to bring manufacturers and principals, i.e., brands, under the same roof following a business model that is the same as that of Zegna as a brand in itself, which began as a prestigious woolen mill and expanded into the production of clothing collections only with the second generation of the founding family in the 1960s. Today, with the third generation of the family at work, brand expansion and business verticalization are increasingly a reality-and thanks to the acquisition of Tom Ford's operations they are about to accelerate even more.