IB 355 - Managing Fashion and Luxury Companies

The course provides an overview of the fashion system and an in-depth understanding of the strategic, organizational and managerial characteristics of fashion and design-based companies, both in the high end and in the mass market.

Brand Management in fashion and luxury industries is the art and the science of creating the ‘dream factor’: the aim is making people buy products not because they need them but because they desire them; in this way companies may achieve both an increase of the profitability and revenues in the short term and of the brand equity in the long term. The methodology behind can be successfully transferred to other industries too.

From this perspective, the course aims at providing the participants the skills for managing key business processes in fashion and luxury companies in a context undergoing a radical evolution.

Course objectives can be synthesized as follows:

• to get acquainted with the concepts of fashion, fashion cycle, fashion and luxury;
• to learn about the main landmarks in the development of fashion and luxury companies and how the greatest international designers, brands and countries (France, Italy, US) influenced the current global fashion system;
• to analyze the main business strategies and business models in fashion (luxury brands, fashion designers, premium brands, fast fashion retailers);
• to understand seasonal strategies at the level of product, distribution and communication;
• to understand the peculiarities of growth strategies in fashion and design-based companies with a specific focus on brand extension.

The learning process is facilitated through stimulating teaching methods such as case histories, guest speakers and field projects, taking advantage from being located in a leading fashion center as Milan.