cosmetics and perfumes. The Giorgio Armani brand is the ambassador of the
Armani empire and represents its image, heritage, personality, product preci-
sion and high quality. It also generates great publicity for the entire Armani
group of brands.
Armani Collezioni is the diffusion sub-brand of the Giorgio Armani range.
It features products like fine tailored clothing, sportswear and male and female
accessories. The product group also includes home furnishings. The Emporio
Armani sub-brand is targeted at young modern-minded and fashion oriented
consumers. It includes clothing, accessories, eyewear and jewellery. Armani
Jeans is the denim sub-brand offering a jeans-based product category. Armani
Exchange is the sub-brand for casual wear and accessories with a lower
premium-pricing strategy. Armani Casa is the home furnishings and decora-
tions sub-brand, while Armani Junior is the children’s products sub-brand.
Although the sub-brands have different products targeting different
segments of the luxury consumer market, the product groups however share
a common feature of the Armani touch and style, seen through the signature
characteristics such as the fit and finish of the clothing, the exquisite materi-
als used for the accessories and the exceptional attention to detail given to
each product. The offerings of the brand have also successfully transcended
beyond fashion and propelled Armani to a lifestyle brand.
The key to the effective brand extension strategy of Armani is that the
brand had an early recognition of the important role of the luxury consumer
in a brand’s success. While several luxury brands focused on the product as
the key selling factor of their brands, Armani concentrated on the consumer
and on crafting its brand based on consumer needs and characteristics. This
was achieved by identifying the different luxury consumer segments that
exist and designing products that would appeal to them. Through under-
standing the consumer segment structures and their driving needs, Armani
adopted the brand extension strategy of sub-brands; and the brand diversifi-
cation strategy of non-fashion categories. As a result, Armani has successfully
created a high-clout brand that has revolutionalized the branding strategy of
the luxury goods industry.
Although Armani has been criticised for extending its product category to
include ranges that are too mass-market focused to be considered as luxury
goods, for example jeans, the Armani brand-extension strategy has been
successful. This is because the brand has effectively managed to maintain its
superiority and high quality standards across the offerings of all the sub-
brands. It has also implemented a uniform marketing mix strategy for all the
sub-brands and the same level of expertise and skill to products across every
range.
Another factor of the success of the Armani brand is the genius of the
brand founder Giorgio Armani, both as a designer and as a businessman. He
is one of the few luxury fashion designers that have successfully combined
creativity with astute business sense and commercial savoir-faire.282
luxury fashion branding