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Brunello Cucinelli continued to buck the luxury slowdown in the first half of 2024: sales rose 14.1 per cent year-on-year to €620.7 million, the brand announced on Tuesday.
Operating income grew 19.3 per cent, to €104.6 million. Margins grew to 16.9 per cent, up from 16.1 per cent in the same period last year. Brunello Cucinelli expects its revenue growth for the full year to be around 10 per cent in 2024 as well as 2025, and confirmed its target of doubling revenues by 2030.
The company partly attributed this margin expansion to its investments in internal production, via manufacturing facilities for men’s outerwear and tailored suits. Brunello Cucinelli’s strategic priorities this year include expanding its artisan production facilities, doubling the size of its Solomeo factory and adding new manufacturing facilities in Italy. To future-proof its production capacity, the company upped its investments from €34.9 million last year to €44.8 million this year as part of its plan to grow production capacities.
“This process of bringing parts of the production of exclusive and very high-quality garments in-house results in lower incidence of production costs, although these are counterbalanced by higher operating costs, mainly for staff,” the press release reads.
Brunello Cucinelli’s performance compares favourably to other luxury players who saw a slowdown in sales growth, including Kering and LVMH. Prada also bucked the trend, with sales growing 17 per cent in H1, as did Hermès, whose sales grew 13.3 per cent in Q2.
Sales in Europe, which represented 35.6 per cent of revenue in the first half of the year, grew 9 per cent (with sales in Italy up 11.8 per cent and the rest of Europe up 7.8 per cent). In the Americas, which represented 36.4 per cent of sales, there was growth of 19.4 per cent. In Asia, which represents 28 per cent of revenues, sales were up 14.3 per cent.
In terms of retail, Brunello Cucinelli generated 63.7 per cent of its revenues via retail in H1 and 36.3 per cent via wholesale. Retail sales grew 14.7 per cent year-on-year while wholesale sales grew 13.1 per cent.
“We closed the first half of 2024 with particularly pleasing results. Sales were excellent, profits were positive and balanced, the brand is fit and healthy, and the feedback on our product offering was highly favourable,” said executive chairman and creative director Brunello Cucinelli in a statement. “We completed the 2024 summer sales very successfully, and the winter sales were off to a very good start.”
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