Abstract
Prada is one of the most successful Italian fashion businesses with unique design aesthetics and provocative counter-mainstream spirit. It is also one of a few companies in the global luxury industry that have chosen to remain independent from mergers with multinational conglomerates, establishing and following its own strategy based on distinction and management coherence. The Prada case is an exemplary depiction of how global recognition of a luxury brand stems from a combination of a constant search for differentiation and shrewd business decisions ensuring efficiency, functionality, and resistance through time. Direct control over retail, well-delineated and uniform brand portfolio with quest for aesthetic and cultural relevance, transcendence of pure commerce to the world of art, technology, architecture, and focus on consumer dialogue through retail experience—all these elements help Prada become one of the most ambitious and trendsetting global luxury brands of modern days.
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Notes
- 1.
In 2013, the Chinese government launched a campaign to fight against corruption and lavish spending of the governmental officials on banquets, vacation, and gifts with the use of public money. This has led to a dramatic decrease in the sales of luxury items, the first negative trend for the luxury sales in decades.
- 2.
In the late 1980s, when Prada bags, shoes, and accessories were in high demand by the customers, the most popular items were sold to retailers only together with relatively little-known women’s ready-to-wear items and, later in 1990s, with secondary Miu Miu, men’s and sportswear lines (Tokatli, 2014).
- 3.
Just like with Parisian haute couture and Florentine leather industries, Milan’s “magic circle” stands for an agglomerate of ready-to-wear industry players, who collectively build up the cultural capital in fashion. Such cultural capital is used both as an organizational asset (e.g., knowledge, human resources availability, partnership opportunities, cost containment, innovation) for the companies that come to operate in and around Milan, and as a strategic marketing leverage (e.g., image, reputation, competitive advantage) for the companies projecting their link to Milan while working with the rest of the world.
- 4.
All the data for the brand portfolio section are referred to Interim Financial Report, 2015 from January to July 2015, as the Annual Report of Prada Group was unavailable when this case was written.
- 5.
The Devil Wears Prada is a 2006 comedy-drama (among 2006’s top 20 both in the United States and abroad) starring Anne Hathaway, Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Stanley Tucci, and others. It is a film adaptation of Lauren Weisberger’s 2003 book with the same name.
- 6.
Francesco Vezzoli (b. 1971, Brescia, Italy) studied at the Central St. Martin’s School of Art in London and currently lives and works in Milan. His work has been exhibited at many institutions.
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Masè, S., Silchenko, K. (2017). The Prada Trend: Brand Building at the Intersection of Design, Art, Technology, and Retail Experience. In: Jin, B., Cedrola, E. (eds) Fashion Branding and Communication. Palgrave Studies in Practice: Global Fashion Brand Management . Palgrave Pivot, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-52343-3_5
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