Luciano Benetton - entrepreneur

Co-founder of iconic clothing and accessories brand

Luciano Benetton, who turns 90 today, has
been active in the business much of his life

The entrepreneur Luciano Benetton, co-founder of a family clothing company that became a worldwide success story in the 1980s and 1990s, was born in Treviso on this day in 1935.

Along with his sister, Giuliana, and their brothers, Carlo and Gilberto, Luciano launched the Benetton Group in 1965, specialising at first in colourful knitwear. From its original store in Belluno, a town in the northern part of the Veneto region, opened in 1965, the group enjoyed a rapid expansion in the 1970s and 80s and at the peak of its success had as many as 6,000 outlets around the world.

Although it has faced tougher trading conditions in more recent years, the group continues to preside over more than 3,500 stores.

Since 1989, the Benetton empire has traded under the name United Colors of Benetton, a brand adopted as part of a long-running collaboration with photographer Oliviero Toscani, who masterminded the group’s provocative and often controversial advertising campaigns.

The Benetton story began in 1955 when Luciano, who had left school at age 14 to work in a clothing store after the death of his father, was working as a knitwear salesman. He had the idea to launch his own business, selling sweaters based on the colourful garments that his sister, Giuliana, designed and knitted for friends and family.

To raise the money needed to buy a knitting machine, he and Giuliana reportedly sold Luciano's accordion and a bicycle belonging to Carlo.  Giuliana was responsible for making the sweaters, which Luciano sold to shops in and around Treviso, using his own bicycle to deliver them.

The subtext of much of Benetton's advertising has
reflected the company's embrace of diversity

As the business grew, they were joined by Carlo and Gilberto. Together, they launched the Benetton Group and opened the company’s first factory in 1965 in Ponzano Veneto, a small town about 6.5km (four miles) north of Treviso, where the group still has its headquarters at the historic Villa Minelli.

The first Benetton shop was opened shortly afterwards, about 70km (43 miles) further north in the beautiful and prosperous town of Belluno in the Eastern Dolomites.  

More outlets were opened in Italy and in 1969 Benetton ventured outside their home country to open a store in Paris. By the early 1970s, the company had a network of 200 shops around Europe. 

The business steadily grew throughout the decade, expanding its range beyond simply sweaters. In 1974, the French fashion company, Sisley, became part of the Benetton Group. 

The first Benetton store in New York opened in 1980, followed by a store in Tokyo in 1982. By the mid-1980s, a Benetton store was opening almost daily. This decade, and the early ‘90s, saw the business at its peak.

United Colors of Benetton was adopted as the
company's brand name from the late 1980s

Apart from the quality and originality of its clothing ranges, the Benetton name maintained its high profile thanks to the controversial advertising campaigns devised by Toscani, appointed by Luciano as his creative director.

Luciano wanted his advertising to reflect the company’s values, namely having a social conscience and being advocates of tolerance and diversity, but much of it was designed to shock, particularly after Toscani became involved. Billboard images such as those showing a duck drenched with crude oil, a naked man with “HIV Positive” branded on his buttock, and an unwashed new-born baby with umbilical cord still attached, all labelled with United Colors of Benetton, became the company’s stock in trade. 

The campaigns prompted a number of lawsuits in different countries but at the same time ensured the Benetton brand remained in the public eye. 

Luciano also identified sports sponsorship as a way to consolidate public awareness of the company name. After first sponsoring Treviso’s rugby team, AS Rugby Treviso, which became a major force in Italian rugby, Benetton became an even bigger influence in motor racing.

Benetton took their colourful image into the world
of Formula One racing with considerable success

Benetton sponsored Formula One teams starting with Tyrrell in 1983, then Alfa Romeo, and eventually set up their own Benetton F1 team, which competed from 1986 to 2000 and achieved significant success under the management of Flavio Briatore. Michael Schumacher won the first two of his seven world championships driving for Benetton. 

As the clothing market became more challenging, Benetton’s success began to wane in the 2000s and Luciano and the other family members stepped back from management roles, although Luciano would twice return to the boardroom out of concern for the company’s ailing fortunes, resigning from his latest stint only in 2024, at the age of 89.  

Away from business, Luciano Benetton served as a senator for the Italian Republican Party from 1992 to 1994, while his Fondazione Benetton Studi Ricerche has developed the Imago Mundi Collection, a vast collection of contemporary art.

In Treviso, where he still lives, his Gallerie delle Prigioni - so called because it is housed in an historic prison from the Habsburg era - provides an exhibition space dedicated to contemporary culture. 

Piazza dei Signori is the beautiful square
at the centre of the city of Treviso

Travel tip:

For many visitors to Italy, Benetton’s home town of Treviso in the Veneto is no more than the name of the airport at which they might land en route to Venice, yet it is an attractive, historic city worth visiting in its own right, rebuilt and faithfully restored after the damage suffered in two world wars. Canals are a feature of the urban landscape – not on the scale of Venice but significant nonetheless – and the Sile river blesses the city with another stretch of attractive waterway, lined with weeping willows. The arcaded streets fanning out from the central square, Piazza dei Signori, have an air of refinement and prosperity and there are plenty of restaurants, as well as bars serving prosecco from a number of vineyards. The prime growing area for prosecco grapes in Valdobbiadene is only 40km (25 miles) away to the northeast.  Treviso also claims to be the birthplace of the famous Italian dessert, tiramisu. 

Benetton's headquarters remains the Villa Minelli in
Ponzano Veneto, which the family bought in 1968

Travel tip:

The Benetton Group headquarters is located in Villa Minelli, in Via Villa Minelli in Ponzano Veneto. It is a building complex built in the 17th century by a family of merchants, which includes a central villa, two colonnades and a small church. After the Minelli family, the villa was abandoned for over 150 years until the Benetton family purchased it in 1968. The renovation project was granted to Afra and Tobia Scarpa, the same architects responsible for the construction of the company’s first factory, the Maglierie Benetton, also in Ponzano Veneto. The renovation took over 15 years to complete. The architects won praise for preserving the solemnity of the villa while also transforming it into an efficient working place, with offices and meeting rooms. The villa is surrounded by vineyards and the park.

Also on this day:

1726: The death of singer and composer Francesco Pistocchi

1804: The birth of Venetian revolutionary leader Daniele Manin

1909: The first Giro d’Italia cycle race

1938: The birth of politician Giuliano Amato 

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Flavio Briatore - entrepreneur

From clothing to luxury resorts via Formula One

Flavio Briatore has interests in a string of resorts
and restaurants serving wealthy clientele

The colourful and controversial entrepreneur Flavio Briatore was born on this day in 1950 in Verzuolo, a large village in the Italian Alps near Saluzzo in Piedmont.

Briatore is best known for his association with the Benetton clothing brand and, through their sponsorship, Formula One motor racing, but his business interests have extended well beyond the High Street and the race track.

His empire includes his exclusive Sardinian beach club Billionaire, Twiga beach clubs in Tuscany and Apulia, the Lion under the Sun spa resort in Kenya, the upmarket Sumosan, Twiga and Cipriani restaurants, and the Billionaire Couture menswear line.

Briatore was also for three years co-owner with former F1 chief executive Bernie Ecclestone and steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal of the English football club Queen’s Park Rangers.  He is also the man to whom the contestants must answer in the Italian version of the hit British TV series The Apprentice.

With a fortune estimated at £120m (€140m; $150m), Briatore lives the lifestyle of the super-rich clients he entertains at his clubs and restaurants, owns a £68.2m (€80m; $85m) yacht and has enjoyed the company of a string of beautiful and famous women.

These include supermodels Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum, with whom he had a child, and the Italian TV presenter Adriana Volpe. In 2008 he married Elisabetta Gregoraci, once the Italian face of Wonderbra, who is 30 years his junior.  They have a son, Falco.

Briatore's wife, the former model Elisabetta Gregoraci

Both of Briatore’s parents were teachers but he was no academic, scraping through high school with the lowest grades. He found employment first as a ski instructor and then a restaurant manager before selling insurance.

It was while he was working at the Borsa – the Milan stock exchange – that in 1974 he met Luciano Benetton, founder of the Italian global clothing company.

Appointed director of group operations in the United States, where Benetton was undergoing significant expansion, Briatore’s job was to set up franchises across the country. He took a cut from each franchise agreement and, with 800 stores opened in the US in the 1980s, became an extremely wealthy man.

In 1989, Luciano Benetton began to sponsor F1 and, wanting someone to take charge of merchandising, turned again to Briatore.

From commercial director, Briatore was promoted to managing director and turned Benetton into a competitive F1 team, which he ran from 1990 to 1997. When the Benetton team was sold to Renault in 2000, Renault hired Briatore as team manager. In all, Briatore oversaw seven world titles in the constructors' and drivers' categories and was hailed as the man who ‘discovered’ the seven-times drivers’ champion, Michael Schumacher.

While there have been some spectacular successes in Briatore’s career, there have also been some catastrophes.

Flavio Briatore in his days as boss
of the Renault F1 team

One of his earliest jobs was as an assistant to businessman Attilio Dutto, owner of the Paramatti Vernici paint company in Cuneo that had previously been owned by Michele Sindona, the shady Sicily-born banker who laundered heroin proceeds for the Gambino family and was poisoned in prison.  Dutto was killed in 1979 in a suspected Mafia car bomb attack.

In 1980 Briatore was convicted on various counts of fraud and given two prison sentences amounting to four and a half years. These were reduced on appeal to two years and two months, although Briatore actually escaped jail by fleeing to the US Virgin Islands and benefitting from an amnesty on his return, which in Italian law amounts to the cancelling of the criminal convictions that led to the sentence.

His yacht at one time was seized during an investigation into alleged tax fraud and, in 2007, he was diagnosed with kidney cancer, for which he was treated successfully.

In 2009, Briatore was banned from motor racing after driver Nelson Piquet Jr alleged he had been instructed to crash deliberately in the 2008 Singapore Grand Prix in a move designed to help his Renault teammate, Fernando Alonso, another Briatore protégé, to win the race.

Motor racing’s governing body, the FIA, handed Briatore and his chief engineer, Pat Symonds, an indefinite ban. However, in 2010, Briatore’s ban was overturned by a French court and he was awarded €15,000 compensation, although his lawyers had asked for €1m.

He has remained involved with F1 as personal manager for Alonso, a close friend who drove the wedding car when he and Gregoraci were married at the Santo Spirito in Sassia church in Rome.

Travel tip:

Saluzzo, the nearest town to Briatore’s birthplace in Verzuolo, is known for its picturesque setting, built on a hill overlooking a fertile plain with a mountain backdrop, and close to the source of the River Po. Its well preserved historic centre features many antique shops and the main sights include Saluzzo cathedral, built at the end of the 15th century in Lombard-Gothic style.

Check Saluzzo hotels with Hotels.com

The expansive Piazza Galimberti in Cuneo

Travel tip:

The beautiful city of Cuneo, which developed at the confluence of the Stura and Gesso rivers, is set out in a grid system with a large, elegant central square, Piazza Galimberti, one of the largest squares in Italy, after Piazza del Plebiscito in Naples. Surrounded by neo-classical buildings, it has a large statue of Giuseppe Barbaroux, the author of the Albertine Statute that formed the constitution of the Kingdom of Sardinia-Piedmont in 1848. The square is named after Duccio Galimberti, one of the heroes of the Italian resistance in the Second World War.

More reading:

Elio de Angelis - last of the 'gentleman racers'

How Michele Alboreto almost ended Italy's long wait for a new champion

Ferruccio Lamborghini - the tractor maker who took on Ferrari

Also on this day:

1948: The birth of World Cup winning football coach Marcello Lippi

(Picture credits: Main Briatore pic by Minerva97; Elisabetta Gregoraci by franco.ruspa; Briatore in Renault days by Bert van Dijk; Piazza Galimberti by Gian Francesco Fanti; all via Wikemedia Commons)

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