Operation Cash (Credit Facilitated Suppliers Help) is the one that Renzo Rosso's Otb group agreed with Ifitalia, Bnp Paribas group, to allow its suppliers to access credit at conditions that they would not normally be able to obtain, at an interest rate about 2,5%. Effective today, the agreement is aimed at small "virtuous" companies but educates others to become so. And it's an opportunity to talk to Renzo Rosso, who presented Cash in Milan today.
“We are seeing incredible things in the banking system, companies are telling us about 18% interest rates, you can't work like this! We enjoy a highly reliable rating but, despite this, our suppliers are in difficulty, they don't obtain large credit lines, they are unable to free up all the credit and, being an important production asset for us, we are worried about their future. The operation is therefore simple: we make our strength and our reliability available to the production chain. Let's start with Staff International, which is our company that manages six licensed brands, which carries out over 90% of its production in Italy and has a network of about 450 suppliers, throughout Italy but above all in the North East. We have divided them into 4 categories (suppliers of raw materials, accessories for production, finished products, laboratories of various kinds from fassonisti to dry cleaners and laundries), building a rating for each category (which will be updated every six months) based on criteria objective and transparent. It is a high threshold, those who exceed it (and they are already around 40% of the supply chain) access credit, the others are encouraged to reach it. It's also a way to push people to work according to international standards of quality, punctuality, precision, in a country like Italy that only educates to make noise”.
In practice, suppliers will be able to liquidate all receivables from Staff International in a very short time (from 5 to 9 days): “we are starting from this reality, but we will soon extend the possibility to suppliers of other group companies, such as Marni for example. And we count on moving from a program with an initial value of 50 million to 100 million''. For Ifitalia this is the first operation of its kind in the fashion sector and for Rosso it is also a way to send a message to the other fashion groups (Renzo Rosso is now also on the board of the Camera Nazionale della Moda Italiana) and to a "slow and bureaucracy that fails to reach these productive realities. On the other hand, engaging in a qualitative rating means for small companies to obtain an important passport for their development”.
Rosso knows international standards well, his group generates 90% of its turnover abroad: “Yet Minister Zanonato defined me as provincial (when Rosso commented on the sale of Loro Piana, ed.) but if being the most international group means say we are provincial, we are happy to be and I hope that others will also become so”. Otb (Only The Brave) controls Diesel, Maison Martin Margiela, Marni, Viktor&Rolf, Brave Kid, Staff International and closed 2012 with a turnover of around 1,5 billion euros, a size that makes it an Italian luxury hub multi-brands. “We achieved double-digit growth even though we planned to do better. The situation in Southern Europe is bad, Central Europe is instead fantastic, the USA is doing well, Japan, where we make 23% of revenues, is the main reality for us, Russia, China, Brazil are also growing. We are a good company even if we are not as big as Lvmh. We are different from the French luxury poles because our purchasing power is more limited, but within our possibilities we are doing very well. And we are also different because we aim for the new modern luxury, an alternative to luxury-luxury. Even if we cannot think of huge acquisitions, we will certainly aim for other brands to add to the group". But what if a fund or bank wants to join you in a big deal, let's say French style? “Thanks to the fact that we are not forced to depend on the banking system, we can now do operations like this one from Cash, if I had to go into debt to work, I would never do it”. And the listing on the stock exchange that didn't come in the past? “Today is not in our plans because by now the family is on board, there are my children (the second son Stefano is the managing director of Otb, ed), we can manage ourselves. It's not planned, but I never exclude anything in life, for example if we wanted to make a very important acquisition we could even think about the stock market even if by now there are two hundred ways to finance ourselves!”.
