Fila is a sport apparel, footwear, and accessories brand that people remember fondly, according to president and CEO Steven Wynne, but it just hasn’t been visible in the market for a long time. “It had evolved a long way from the elite performance heritage that once characterized it to more of a mass-market, lower-end distribution,” Wynne said.

Wynne joined the company in 2003 to execute a turnaround and re-launch the brand. “We’ve been cleaning up the brand platform and building good business execution. As a consequence, we’re on the way to a significant re-launching and positioning of Fila.”

Back to its roots
The Italian brand is more than 90 years old, but it’s best known for being the first true sports-fashion brand in the ’70s, explained Wynne. It was an apparel company for elite athletes until the mid ’80s.

In an effort to grow its worldwide revenue base in the ’90s, Fila aggressively expanded in the US, having early success in American-driven sports such as basketball. “In pursuing that success, the company walked away from its historic brand identity—from an elite Italian performance brand to a brand identity that was more modeled to fit the mass market,” Wynne explained.

“It made some performance and fashion products, but the quality declined. By 2002 and 2003, things that characterized Fila historically—innovative design, sophisticated use of textiles and fabrics, and a brand position for the most elite athletes—were not present in the broader perception of the brand. And the company’s profits reflected that.”

The decline in sales and loss of profitability led to a three-year process in which the owners of the brand marketed the company for sale. A New York-based investment company (its current owners) ultimately bought it in 2003.

“We needed to find out what the brand identity was, and that was a fairly simple process because we aspired to be what we were meant to be since inception,” Wynne said. “I knew we had to embrace the things that made this brand significant.”

Critical positioning
The CEO worked to embrace Fila’s history, former design, and sophistication, starting with communications and distribution. “Having decided on the brand positioning, we wanted to bring our products to consistent but new markets.”

Wynne looked at critical global markets, evaluated their needs, and, in most cases, changed the approach the company was taking to serve them. For instance, the company had nothing
of consequence in the Chinese market, so it systematically set out to find a licensee there. That has since been a success and has enabled Fila to launch the business and grow it fairly aggressively in that market.

In addition to spreading to key markets, Wynne had to refine and rebuild a communications platform. “We needed to know who we wanted to identify with, and we had to decide which athletes and events were representative of what we aspire to be,” he said. “We’ve been engaged in these processes the last 12 months. The work we put into our positioning will be reflected over the next 24 months.”

Walk the talk
Fila is launching a significant advertising campaign, predominantly in print ads designed to convey a message that sports can be life-enhancing, life-affirming, and beautiful, which is a distinct comparison to many of its competitors’ beat-your-opponents attitude.

If a company is going to put out a positive message about its product, it needs to make sure it delivers one that backs that up, explained the CEO. “We need to establish a communications platform that we believe in and that will serve us solidly.”

Fila has also initiated a new retail strategy. In the last eight months,
it opened up five stores in the US. The company has a significant
retail presence in more than 70 stores in Italy but had been
completely dependent on third-party retailers to carry its products in the US.

The first store opened is two floors down from the company headquarters in New York City on 340 Madison Avenue. “It’s a little larger than the stores we’re opening in other places, but we wanted to have the space to interact with customers,” he said.

The NY store received the coveted ISPO award in December, 2005 for “Best Store” in its category and was designed by award winning Italian architect, Giorgio Borruso. The location of the store signifies some prestige and is highly accessible, located just one block from Grand Central Station. That Fila chose a renowned Italian architect and the location has been recognized for its design plays up the lengths to which it is going to capitalize on its heritage. The other stores are in La Jolla and San Jose, Calif., Las Vegas, and Charlotte, NC.

Nineteen more Fila stores are scheduled to open by the end of 2006. “We plan to aggressively pursue our retail strategy because we think it’s good business, and it’s a good way to engage the consumer directly.”