Brands that champion what really matters to people will always have a future – but ditching any emotional attachment is the first step to achieving revival
It's a somewhat staggering fact that 87% of companies in the Fortune 500 in 1955, were no longer in existence by 2011.
Miuccia Prada had trained in theatre and earned a doctorate in political sciences before she took on the family luxury luggage business her grandfather set up. Seven years after taking on the company, she initiated the Prada pivot with a range of nylon bags. These re-wrote the codes of luxury and paved the way for the Milan company to become a global fashion powerhouse.
When fashion conglomerate Limited Brands bought the ailing Abercrombie & Fitch name in 1977, it achieved a comparable feat. It managed to remake an ailing sporting and outdoors equipment store into a brand that merely evoked the outdoors life. Responding to a changing world, they went from serious products for a pastime to a new kind of clothing, which was more about suggesting an aspirational lifestyle.
