Management of Fashion and Luxury Companies

Learn how fashion and luxury companies work and understand their brands, products, retail, and communication strategies. Travel through business models, international development, and product categories with industry influent experts. Adopting a case-study approach, the course presents strategic brand management in luxury and fashion companies as a balancing act: tradition vs. innovation, expertise vs. experimentation, casual vs. stylish; in order to increase the brand value by nurturing the brand heritage and at the same time staying fresh, relevant, and contemporary in the global marketplace. Topics such as the impact of new retail channels, new media channels, and new business declinations for the brand and emerging markets will be discussed in the course.

• What is Fashion? What is Luxury? Defining Complex Competitive Systems and Business Logics
• Welcome to the first week of our course! Before moving this week contents, please dedicate some time to read the About the Course section where you can find a series of useful information to approach the course the best way. The Trips&Tricks section contains some insights and best practices that Lucia Paladino (an industry expert) shared with our community. Once you have done with these introductory readings you can finally move to the first contents! This first module is dedicated to a general introduction to fashion and luxury concepts: what they imply, how they are perceived, how they differ, and what other basic ideas in this industry are.
• The Evolution of Business Models: From Designers to Fast Fashion Retailers
• This second week will be significantly denser and more time consuming than the first one. The topic is that of Business Models in Fashion and Luxury, and will give you a lot of important insights on this industry.
• Stylistic Identity and the Product Development Process: The Role of Heritage, Stylistic Codes and Icon Products in Defining the Seasonal Collection
• Welcome to module 3! The main topics here will be the complexity of product development, brand identity, stylistic identity, and the development of the collection. Remember also that at the end of this module you will find the first QUIZ (counting 40% of the final grade)! This quiz is going to test your knowledge and understanding of the first three modules. You need to listen to all video lectures and to read all the slides of the three modules carefully to successfully complete it.
• Image Identity and the Communication Process: Key Activities, Decision Makers, the Challenge of Creating Digital Contents for Fashion and Luxury Brands
• Week 4 will cover another very crucial topic: Communication. Communication per se is an extremely rich and broad topic and the fashion and luxury industry requires a specific and dedicated chapter as it encompasses unique aspects that need to be correctly addressed and understood.
• Retail Identity and Retail Management: the Customer’s Experience Within a Mix of Channels. The Future of Fashion E-tailing.
• In a world where geographical boundaries are physically and virtually evolving, companies need to be able to manage their international presence without losing their identity. There are a number of elements that need to be taken into account when planning retail strategy. Traditional distribution channels evolve while new channels enrich the scenario. This is also our last week of the course. At the end of it you will have the second QUIZ (40% of the final grade) covering module 4 and 5. Also in this case be sure to listen to all lectures and interviews, and to read all the slides to prepare yourself properly. Once you have done with this second quiz, you can move to the FINAL TEST.
• FINAL TEST
• Congratulations! You made it up to here! The structure of the final test is different from the previous quizzes: you will be given 10 multiple choice questions based on two annual reports (Ferragamo and Nike). Of course the questions will be related to topics covered in the course but this time we are asking you to apply your knowledge to these two specific cases. The benefit of this format is twofold: on one hand you can apply some of the concepts you have learned so far, on the other you will see an annual report, a fundamental source of information you may have to handle in the future. This test will be more challenging than the two previous quizzes but don't give up, and it counts only for 20% of the final grade in order not to penalize too much who is struggling with it.