Benetton Restructures: Sheds Real Estate Holdings and Rethinks Vertical Integration

Benetton, facing a historic change for the group. The Italian company, which began operating as an industrial giant to become also a fashion brand, one of the first to go around the world, says goodbye once and for all to the vertical integration model. The company, with Claudio Sforza at the helm for more than a year, will be structured into seven different companies that will manage the store network, design and the distribution network.

As advanced today by Milano Finanza, Benetton has divided its assets and business functions into seven new companies, dependent on a holding company, which maintains the historic name of Benetton Group and will centralize the financial and legal management functions. Retail Omnia Network, which in turn manages both the Italian stores owned by the group (grouped under Retail Italia Network) and the stores abroad.

The companies created to manage the retail businesses in Turkey, India, Korea and Japan, as well as another new company, Property 357, which will group together the group’s real estate assets, also depend on the holding company.These include Benetton’s headquarters in Villa Minelli, Fabrica, the group’s research center, and other land and real estate owned by the company in Italy.

Benetton expects to return to profit by year-end 2026

In this way, the group has thus split its real estate properties from the rest of the business, which would allow the company to sell part of them and reduce the debt of the business, as Kering has been doing since the end of last year. Benetton also launched a restructuring plan in 2024 to contain losses, which at year-end stood at €230 million.

As part of this plan, Benetton has carried out in the last year the closure of production centers in Tunisia, Croatia and Serbia, while in Italy has transferred workers from the Ponzano Veneto plant to Castrette di Villorba, in addition to reducing both its workforce and its sales force worldwide. Sforza’s objective is that, both through the outsourcing of part of the production, as well as this division within the group, the company will be back in the black by the end of fiscal year 2026.

Other companies created after the spin-off are Green 347, which will manage the group’s brands and will also be managed by Sforza, Benetton Operations, which will be in charge of design, marketing and product communication.Benetton Distribution, which encompasses distribution activities, including franchising, Benetton Logistics and Benetton Ecommerce, which group together warehousing and logistics and the online business, respectively.

Although Benetton has been languishing for years, it was at the end of 2023 when Luciano Benetton, co-founder of the company, resigned as executive chairman after years in the position, and revealing a financial “hole” in the group of more than 100 million euros. At that time, the company decided to dismiss its CEO, Massimo Renon, which brought Scorfa into the company.