Massimo Piombini, who took over as the new CEO of Diesel SpA in late January, plans to expand in the sneakers market to turn around the denim brand that had its heyday in the 1990s. The pandemic is accelerating the brand’s expansion plans as its 436 stores across the world remain unaffected. Diesel also now plans to set up flagship stores in a number of hub cities, from New York and London to Berlin and Tel Aviv.
A part of the OTB group, founded by the Italian fashion entrepreneur Renzo Rosso, Diesel remains by far the biggest brand, generating about €900 million ($1 billion) of the group’s €1.5 billion revenue last year. In the 1990s, it became one of the best known Italian-designed global lifestyle brands and helped push denim into a premium category for the first time.
The brand sells 700,000 sneakers a year and hopes to potentially quadruple that number. The company will also revamp its merchandising and marketing strategies besides accelerating its digital transformation.
