Hello everybody, thank you for joining our virtual Investor Day 2021. My name is Christian Stoehr, Vice President, Investor Relations and Corporate Communications at HUGO BOSS. On behalf of the entire Managing Board, I would like to welcome you to our Investor Day 2021. After such a long time of social distancing and virtual talks, it would have been great to finally meet you in person again. We would have loved to welcome you at our group's headquarters and walk you through our showrooms to let you experience what drives our company day by day, our love for fashion. However, the health and safety of all of us remains our first priority. Believe me, we are very much looking forward to inviting you to our headquarters as soon as travel is safe again.
At the same time, we are convinced that today is the right time to show you how the future of HUGO BOSS will look like. Today is all about our new strategy for the next five years, a truly new chapter for HUGO BOSS. We are excited to share with you first-hand insights into our company and guide you through our strategic priorities and objectives until 2025. Let me give you a brief overview of what you can expect from us today. Daniel Grieder will kick off the Investor Day by presenting the core of our 2025 strategy and what CLAIM 5 is all about. As part of Daniel's presentation, you will also see Ingo Wilts showcasing how our branding refresh will come to life and become visible for the consumer.
Daniel is followed by Oliver Timm, who will elaborate on how we will translate brand power into our touchpoints to ultimately create a best-in-class consumer experience across all channels and markets. After a short break, Heiko Schäfer will first talk about our operations activities before giving you more information about our sustainability engagement and the objectives for the years to come. Yves Müller will elaborate on how our CLAIM 5 strategy will translate into the financials and share with you our financial ambition in more detail. Finally, Daniel will bring it all together in his closing remarks by talking about the execution of our 2025 strategy and the importance of empowering employees. After a second short break, we will dive into the Q&A session at approximately 1:30 P.M. Central European Summer Time, where the entire Managing Board will be happy to take your questions.
Please be aware that questions can be submitted during the entire event by using the chat function. We all have been waiting for this moment for quite a long time, and we are excited that the managing board is finally complete. Therefore, let me now officially introduce you the new CEO of HUGO BOSS, Daniel Grieder.
Ladies and gentlemen, a warm welcome to today's strategy presentation. I'm very happy to be able to introduce myself to you today and to present to you the new HUGO BOSS strategy until 2025. The timing for this may look early from your point of view, but believe me, I had a lot of time to prepare myself, and it is great to be here after one year now and to be a part of HUGO BOSS. Before I go into detail, I would like to mention one thing that absolutely excited me when I came here in June. When I arrived at our campus eight weeks ago, I must say that I was absolutely impressed by the spirit and the people at our headquarters. The teams have met with reflect the great talent we have at HUGO BOSS, and this really goes across the whole organization.
On top of that, we also have the best-in-class capabilities when it comes to other areas such as production facilities, logistics, or the campus itself. HUGO BOSS has so much to offer. I absolutely believe in the enormous potential of this company, I am convinced that we will take HUGO BOSS to the new heights in the years to come. Over the past weeks, we have worked intensively with the management board and the teams across the whole organization to develop the right strategy to allow this unique company with two powerful brands to unlock its full potential. Let's get started. The most exciting time in fashion ever is right now. There's a few points I see why this is it, The first one is there's a massive opportunity for premium, affordable luxury fashion brands, exactly our sweet spot.
That's the reason is this the global high-income population that will actually double from now until the years to come. Also, a new consumer emerges. By 2030, Gen Z will make up the largest consumer segment worldwide. Not only Gen Z. The young wealthy consumers value something crafted, unique, sustainable, and experiential. Therefore, Millennials, Gen Z, and Gen Alpha, they need a constant connectivity. They need expectation in seamless experiences. The consequence is that we deliver them continuous values and feelings. The responsibility is to do it in a transparently and sustainable way. The importance of experience is right in the middle. Millennials, for example, they value experience over materializing. The experience is what counts for them. The experience as a brand or in a store or whatever we do, that needs to touch them.
The purpose has become a key success factor for a company, for a brand, even for a product or for a person. A sustainable future is essential. New concept, circularity, whatever, they are open for new concepts there. They also want to save our planet. Remember, if there is no planet, there is also no fashion. A mobile-first approach is crucial for everybody. As a brand, we need to look in this mobile. We need to be able to touch them, to give them the experience they're looking for. The mobile-first approach is crucial for a brand and a company. The entire value chain needs to be digitalized. Think about from supply-driven demand today to demand-driven, or from significant waste in the past, we need to reduce waste today. From physical products, we come to virtual products.
The digital revolution is also in design and development, is also in the processes and infrastructure, and very important in consumer experience. All leveraged by the power of data that is more precise, quicker, and smarter. By the way, a heritage and a longstanding legacy no longer guarantee the value of a brand. Today, relevance has become the new legacy. What has brought the company where it is today is not what it will bring it to into the future. A new source of competitiveness was in the past the age of production. Today, it's about the age of marketing and sales. In the future, it's about the age and data as well as learning. I think it's not one or the other. It's actually all together. We have to bring all the three together in one.
Where do we stand at HUGO BOSS today? The DNA was so successful and is successful. HUGO BOSS was the pioneers in fashion. Everybody looked up to HUGO BOSS because they had a perfect brand experience. They had a great product with a fantastic price -value. They had an incredible distribution. They had all in place. On top of that, in terms of marketing, they hit all the points. Not only that, today, HUGO BOSS has still very strong assets. Think about the brand awareness, the premium lifestyle positioning, the diversified business model. Not only suit, it's also other product areas, men's, women's, BOSS, HUGO. Also the distribution network is very strong. We have an omni-channel distribution network. As I already mentioned, a motivated team. Thanks God, healthy financials and an in-house production that I mentioned in the beginning.
On top of everything, we're already leading in sustainability. Yeah, are we unlocking the full potential of HUGO BOSS? That's the question. Well, certainly there is room to improve. Here you see clearly who is in fast fashion, who is in performance and sport, and who is premium and affordable luxury, and where is in the luxury business. We position ourselves clearly in premium and in affordable luxury, and as you can see, we can claim the position there more to the right side. To realize our full potential, we need to address the younger consumer. We need to increase our brand relevance. We need to optimize distribution network. We have to invest into the product offering to hit the price-value optimization. In other words, the time is now for us. As I said, it's already there. Everything is there.
It doesn't have to be created new. It doesn't have to be first built. It was already there. It's there, and we just have to unlock it. Therefore, for me, this is a comeback. This is a comeback like the athletes when you have been a winner, when you have been an Olympics winner. You had a bit difficult time, but you claim back the lead. Comparing that with athletes, what they have done in sport, we do with HUGO BOSS. We're going to have a comeback. We're going to claim back our position, as I showed you before. How are we going to do that? We're going to implement a clear vision, a mission, and a bold ambition. The vision is to become the premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide. I emphasize the tech-driven and platform. Come to that later.
Because we love fashion, and we're going to change fashion. Our bold ambition will to become one of the top 100 global brands, and we're going to hit EUR 4 billion in 2025 and EUR 5 billion thereafter. We're going to double the business, we're going to double our business on top line, and we're going to go back to profitability, which creates a 12% margin. This is our bold ambition. How are we going to do that? The possibility we have is not only in BOSS Men's, or is not only in one channel, or is not only in one region. No, it's possible in all the brands. BOSS Menswear in all the product groups, BOSS Women's in all the product groups, but also in HUGO for men's and women's. In channel, it's not only digital.
We can claim it back in wholesale, also in retail, in all channels. Also in the region. It's not only Asia. We can do it also in the U.S., in the Americas, and Europe. We can go all the way, we can grow in all the brands, in all the channels, and all the regions. This is fantastic. This is an incredible potential that we have in our hands and that we're going to build into the future. For that, we going to implement the CLAIM 5 strategy. That explains exactly why we do things, what we do, and how we're going to do it. I start with the first why. It's because the consumer is first. We have to take the consumer in the middle of everything we do. We have to claim back the position in the consumer mindset. You know what?
The consumer needs to be very first, as I said, but the consumer should not be a consumer. It should be actually become our fan. We need fans out there. We need to create fans, first internally, and then outside of the company in the whole world. We need fans. As I said, the consumer and the fans needs to be in the middle, and we're going to build awareness with them. We're going to engage the consumers. We're going to incentivize to interact. We're going to build relationships, we're going to build loyalty with them to be able to drive purchase together with our fans. What we do, the first point of what we're going to do is we're going to boost the brand. We have a clear strategy on the platform. HUGO BOSS is the platform.
BOSS and HUGO are the brands on that platform, and maybe there is more to come. These two brands will have a balanced and strong brand portfolio, and they will have two lifestyle stories, and both will be positioned in a premium lifestyle. We're going to have a clear brand architecture. You see on menswear, we're going to implement, we're going to refresh, we're going to modernize all these labels that start from Camel to Black to Orange and Green. All was here already, and now we're going to refresh it, we're going to modernize it, and we're going to make these things clear. Orange in casual, Green in athleisure. Also Camel we make more exclusive, and Black will be business and smart casual wear. Also in womenswear, we're going to start with the Camel brand. We have potential to do more here one day.
We have the kids, we're going to have HUGO Menswear and womenswear, which we can boost for the younger consumers. It's all there, we're just going to refresh it in all these parts. We're going to aim for a younger consumer. We're going to have clear individual brand images. We're going to leverage innovation and sustainability to strengthen the brand relevance. We're going to implement a data and performance-driven marketing approach, we're going to push omnichannel. The brand refresh goes like this. We have to revitalize the brands, both. We're going to do it with a new brand world for menswear, for womenswear, and for HUGO. We're going to make it more modern. We're going to make it already from a color point of view, we add one layer to that. It's going to be not only black.
BOSS is not going to stay only for black, it's going to stay for black, white, and camel. You see already how sophisticated that world looks in the menswear side. You see also how it's going to look on the womenswear. Much more modern, much younger. Imagine an ad where it says, "I am the boss," and on the left side is a woman. That is becoming a BOSS brand also for not only for men's, also for women's. Also the store will look different than menswear, or the department store, the shop in shop will look different in womenswear than in menswear. In HUGO, we're going to go more for jeans, for streetwear. Also, we're going to be the first touchpoint for the young consumer and create a modern, a cool also suit for them. That's how the shop looks.
It's not cold, it's cool. That's how it's going to look. This is going to bring relevance to HUGO and to BOSS. The BOSS branding, as you can see, the new brands, the new colors you have seen is going to be able with that we can play around. It's not anymore BOSS with small HUGO BOSS, it's BOSS, or it's HUGO. We can create in different product groups, we can execute that BOSS branding in different ways. We can actually add it in makeup. We can add it in the home. We can add it in BOSS in accessories and whatever we do. There's a different version. That's how we could, as an example, put it in shoes or put it somewhere on a sweater or on an accessories in a different way of the execution.
We can make it very modern for the young consumer. Look at this. Who doesn't want to have that hoodie? This is one of the possibility of the execution we do. For HUGO, it's the same. We're going to do a different branding. It's going to look different, but it's going to look cool. It's going to be new, it's going to be modern, and we can implement it in all the product groups. That's also in underwear or in jeans, or wherever in shoes or wherever in travel, or even we can create our HUGO drink. That is already, by the way, existing in all the markets. In every restaurant, at least in Europe where you go, you can order a HUGO and you're going to get a good drink. The brand strategy is very important, and the BOSS needs to be created new.
As the name says, it's right here in the name. The boldness, the confidence, the attitude. The definition of a boss has changed from a boss, from a person who is in charge of a worker group or an organization. That was people were associating the job or a boss like this. Today, the definition of a boss has changed to a person who leads a self-directed life. This is not only for men, this is also for women, for kids, or for anybody. Everybody in today's world and the way we're going to go out and set it up, everybody can be a boss. Therefore, the attitude of a boss today is it's writing your own rules. It's chasing your own dreams. It's finding your own purpose. It's living life on your own terms. It's being whatever you want to be.
Therefore, Be Your Own BOSS. The mindset of a boss today is confident yet curious, independent, but still inspired by others. He's a risk-taker and a change-maker, and you live like a boss in every role you play. Therefore, Be Your Own BOSS where we can do a hashtag. #BeYourOwnBoss, we can play wonderful everywhere on social media. We can also take celebrities, and we can actually explain what it means for each celebrity to be a boss. This is just an example that we use here for a presentation. If you take Serena, she's not just a tennis player. She's a mother. She's a fighter. She's a record-breaker. She's an icon. She's a partner. She is a tennis player, but she's also a real boss, and she can sign, for example. Chris, he's not only an actor. He's a dad. He's a wave catcher.
He's a superhero, a brother, an ocean saver, and an actor, yes, but he's a real BOSS, and he would sign as well. We can play the way we want with that. Think about here, imagine we would take the 30 or 50 icon buildings in the whole of world, and one day next year, we overnight, we're going to put with a light show all these letters on it where it says, "Live like a BOSS. Play like a BOSS. Dream like a BOSS." I think everybody would know us next day. We can create BOSS spaces where we can do pop-up stores. We can do BOSS moves. We can also be game-changers in redefining what women really aspire to wear. We can also go anywhere we want where a BOSS has never gone before.
We can create the suit of the future, and we actually can make pictures wherever we want in this world, maybe even on the moon. A BOSS writes their own rules also. A BOSS will be, maybe, created a suit that is gender-neutral, that has just a size for all the genders, and the sizes for all the genders. We can play with it in any way we want, and then we can create drops. We can take famous people who create a small drop for us. We can actually, BOSS lifts up other BOSSes. Everybody who is winning every day somewhere or is doing something good for this planet or for this world, we actually can put in social media as a real BOSS. Everybody will understand what BOSS is and who a BOSS really is, and we have, we own that name.
A BOSS can also go wild for the planet. As I said, we have to also stand for our planet, and we can go wild for the planet. We have our responsibility. Therefore, I want to show you short video where basically it is summarized what we can do with that brand. Be your own BOSS. When this is for BOSS, what is then up for HUGO? Well, there, the attitude for HUGO is also different. We actually can create our own language, and the HUGO is actually a go-getter, is somebody who owns his own, goes his own way. He's a rebel and a rule-breaker. A HUGO can do whatever he wants to do. He can go all out with it. You can ask a real HUGO, "How do you HUGO? What do you HUGO?" You can create your language that you can see here.
HUGO get them. Go get them. HUGO for the glory. HUGO your own way. HUGO for it. Imagine that we create T-shirts that doesn't have only a brand, a label on it, but that has a message on the T-shirt. We can play in any way we want with our own created language. A HUGO rules for styling up goes like this. You set trends, you don't follow them. You love a classic so long as you can make it your own. So that's the personalization. You use your own style to express your personality. We also can create HUGO spaces anywhere in this world, places we can do, or we just can put up an ad. And actually, if there somebody sees that, everybody will remember. And I also show you the summary of how HUGO can be. HUGO your own way.
Fantastic how we can play with that. The brand potential is enormous. If we only take here BOSS, we can foster brand positioning. We're going to dress consumers for every occasion 24/7. We're going to enhance the lifestyle of menswear. We emotionalize the brand to attract younger consumer, and we push digital sales. If we do that in menswear, we actually can lift sales from EUR 1.5 billion to EUR 2.6 billion. In womenswear, we have to drive the brand strengths amongst the female. That, we have to really boost. We have to increase visibility across all consumer touch points, maybe starting in our own stores and in the wholesale and digital, wherever. We have to increase visibility across all consumer touch points. Also in womenswear, we actually should bring the brand for a 24/7 capturing in all wearing occasions.
We also have to focus on digital. If we do all that, it's going to raise from EUR 0.1 billion to EUR 0.4 billion. We have also HUGO, men's and women's, where it's going to be the first brand touch point. We have to build a HUGO brand power and focus on the differentiation compared to HUGO. We're going to grasp growth opportunity by balancing contemporary and commercial items. Actually, we're going to focus also on digital and to drive geographical expansion. We're going to grow, if you do all that, from EUR 0.3 billion-EUR 0.8 billion. You see tremendous potential in all the brands. How is our marketing strategy look like? Well, it has to be clearly distinguished strategy. Two lifestyle brands, two different marketing approach, and two different target groups, as I explained.
We have to set up in marketing clear more investments, and we have to increase the efficiency. We also have to, as I said already, distinguish the BOSS and the HUGO marketing presentation. We have to ensure every consumer touch point is working in alignment. We have to be a part, we have to talk to the right culture there, and we have to create and be the leading in purpose and the values we communicate. We have to create a hype and also work probably with different collaborations for BOSS and for HUGO. As you can see here, we made some examples where it says the BOSS teams up with other bosses. We can actually team up with anything in sport. We can do anything in adventure. We can team up with other teams. We can do a collaboration in travel.
We can do collaborations in culture. We can do collaborations in music. For example, in HUGO, we can also do sport. We can do in merchandising. We can do collaborations, whatever we want to do. The potential to do all that, if you realize this by now, how big it can be. This was how we're going to boost the brand. I explain how we're going to push product and how we make product king again. Product needs to be king. We also claim back the product is king. As I said, this is a 24/7 brand. We dress all ages from head to toe for every occasion. We're going to ensure that we're going to implement premium quality in all our products. We're going to be clear that we have a point of difference also in all the garments.
We're going to have a comprehensive and functionality and in terms of innovation, we're going to drive it into the products. We're going to have sustainability as a future value across all the portfolio. We're going to offer a fantastic and attractive price-value proposition. Again, we're going to focus on product. We're going to make product king, and therefore, we implement a product matrix, we call it, for all the labels. Think about, if you see on the right side, the foundation will be the core and the basics for all the brands. This only is going to be 40% of the total sales. We're also going to create capsule and collaborations, capsule collection. We're going to do collabs, as I explained. We're going to create quick response to stay relevant and to create a BOSS. That's going to be another 20% of sales.
We're going to inspire with the seasonal fashion, which is also 20%. The last is we're going to grasp opportunity in jeans. We're going to implement it not only in HUGO, but also in BOSS, in underwear and swim. We're going to also push footwear and accessories. This is clearly a growth potential, which at least will be 20%. From tailored to modern innovative lifestyle, products to wear 24/7, from morning to the evening, and the casualization and comfort are key. I show you, through Ingo Wilts, in the next film, an overview of what he and his team with the business unit already have implemented this season and will be delivered as of December. That means the new logo will be visible, the new colors, and the new, younger style will be clearly visible. Please watch this.
Today, fashion moves at the speed of light. Consumers aren't just looking for the perfect fit of fabric anymore. They want a brand to identify with. HUGO BOSS is more than a name, more than a brand. It is a commitment to the future. Everything we do is an expression of fashion-forward tailoring, casualization, masterful garments, and the perfect cut. The key to our success, a focus on progress and a clear difference in all our products. All the more reason to keep pushing boundaries. Our brand refresh represents the next step forward. Our new logo is the embodiment of embracing progress. It speaks to a younger generation that doesn't compromise when it comes to style. You've heard of BOSS Bold. Now you can see it. Now everyone can. With it comes a fresh color code: black, white, and camel. Classic and contemporary. Simple, sophisticated, elegant. Unmistakably BOSS.
We have and always will be a truly global brand. With this in mind, we will grow socially responsible into the future, with sustainability at the heart of everything we do. From tailoring to athleisure, womenswear, bodywear, and shoes and accessories, we are a 24/7 lifestyle brand primed for the digital age. With a fresh look, as always, we are ready for the future.
Amazing, right? Remember, this will all be live in December in all the touch points in our fans touch points or end consumer touch points. What was for BOSS, I show you now what it is for HUGO. It's the first brand touch point, as I said, for the younger consumer. The product range will be a different identity, and we're going to implement some capsule collections that are more speed, that have shown more opportunities in capsule collection a quick response. It's going to be more colorful. How it's going to look like, I show you in the next video.
HUGO is about getting on a first-name basis, breaking the rules of formality, championing innovation and not being afraid to embrace change. HUGO is the first brand touchpoint for a younger generation of style-savvy statement makers and rule breakers who don't follow trends but set them. We inspire them with collections at the forefront of fashion by pushing boundaries and being bold. Our sharpened product range will remain rooted in the HUGO BOSS identity, yet always with an eye to the future. To reflect the brand's authentic and unconventional style, HUGO's iconic logo will remain an integral part of future product releases. It's about empowering the movers and shakers and them empowering us. After all, style is a dialogue, and HUGO is ready to lead the conversation.
A great job, what Ingo and the business unit leaders have already implemented in that short time. The third point I'm going to talk about what we're going to do is about how we're going to lead in digital. We also want to claim the lead in digital. It's all about human creativity and data-driven. Today, I'm not only talking about digital, it's also about the data that plays a big role in the future. Our roadmap towards becoming augmented analytics, the roadmap, and the key deliveries that we're going to need to implement in all aspects in our business. We have to get the basics. We have to get dashboards. We have to also apply in AI and machine learning. We cannot be without in the future.
A lot needs to be implemented into the business, but we cannot do that our own. I come to that. Also, as you can see, the multiple measures and the digital strategy along the value chain is not only happening in sales with digital showrooms, it's also in the demand, in the design, in the development, in the product logistics, in marketing and sales. Not only there, actually in the whole organization. The new normal or the future will be digital and data-driven. I said that we're going to create a Digital Campus with a partner. Why we do that? Because we want to have speed of execution. We were going to get faster there where we want to be. Actually, that's the shortcut where we go. We want to focus on other things that are also important and that we are specialists for.
This is a different skills you need to have. Therefore, we're going to build a digital focus with Metyis, and we create on our side, we continue to be the front end in consumer-facing, product-orientated strategy, and decision-making on every aspect that's on our side and will happen in Metzingen. On the other side, there is the analytical, the technical, and the executional capacity and capability that will be done on the Digital Campus. That you can understand what it means, I show you the next video. Digital traces are everywhere, and this is an incredible opportunity for us to boost sales faster and even smarter with implementing digital and all this data into our business. Thank you for your attention so far. I'm looking forward to connecting with you again shortly.
Thank you, Daniel, and hello, everybody. My name is Oliver Timm, Chief Sales Officer at HUGO BOSS. I'm excited to have the opportunity to speak to all of you about our way forward in sales and distribution, and what course we will take in regard of building up a true omni-channel experience for our customers. CLAIM 4 of our 2025 strategy. Since my appointment as CSO at HUGO BOSS in January of this year, I've been captured by this company, its two iconic brands, and the massive growth opportunities. For me, it is all about omni-channel because this is what end consumers ultimately expect from us. A seamless, perfectly meshed brand experience that overcomes classic mindsets and divisions from retail, to wholesale, to e-commerce, to pure players and marketplaces.
Over the next five years, we aim to rebalance our distribution footprint because neither retail only, nor wholesale only, nor online only will allow us to write the next growth story for HUGO BOSS. It will be the right balance that will allow us to do so. That's why I call it rebalance omni-channel. From Daniel's presentation, you have heard about our many branding initiatives to elevate brand relevance for our consumers. Building on this, we will ensure to translate our brand power into all consumer touch points. It is our clear goal to establish a 24/7 lifestyle brand, dressing our customers from head to toe and for every occasion, including footwear, bodywear and hosiery, and accessories that are all areas with great growth potential for HUGO BOSS.
A clear differentiation between BOSS Black, BOSS Orange, BOSS Green, and HUGO offering a full range from business to casual and sportswear, will allow us to better position our brands in the market, attack multiple segments, conquer new sales areas, and gain back market share. Leveraging our distribution variety will be key to establish a 24/7 lifestyle brand and ensure a full customer centricity across all channels, from retail to wholesale to online. Each channel fulfills particular customer needs. In our own retail stores, our customers clearly want to experience our brands, and we want to inspire our customers. The outlet channel is by far not only a clearance channel, but also serves for many customers as a first touch point with our brands. Department stores continue to be very relevant for our customers who want to enjoy the variety of brands. This has not changed at all over the years.
hugoboss.com will serve as our online flagship to discover the brand and get inspired. With our presence in online platforms, be it pure player or bricks and clicks, we serve customers who want to find and get our fashion fast and easy. Therefore, we need to be omnipresent. Only by being omnipresent, we combine the power of all touch points. With online, we focus on a 24/7 availability, benefit from strong traffic, offer a full product range, and gain valuable consumer insights. Offline, we win over the consumer through brand experience, personal interaction, and enjoyment, as well as instant ownership, which all yields to high conversion rates. Across all touch points, it is of utmost interest to gain consumer insights. First, to personalize the consumer journey, and second, to adapt to the needs of our consumers. Being always one step ahead.
Our CRM is of particular importance in this regard, something I will get to later on. Our omnichannel journey already has several building blocks. Click and collect, order from store, return and replace, find in store. This gives us a great foundation to build on. What's next will make the difference. Connected retail, partner programs, integration of franchise partners, virtual selling opportunities, ship from store, the digital journey in stores as well as the new ways of customer interaction. As you can see in terms of distribution, we move to where consumers expect us to be. Let's take a closer look at the various touch points, starting with digital. Over the next five years, we will strongly focus on exploiting this channel by adapting to a true digital-first approach. Let me outline how we will do that. Already today, the journey starts online.
The vast majority of first consumer touch points is through search engines, brand websites, and social channels. In contrast to this, only 27% of first consumer touch points start within physical stores. This clearly underlies the importance of a strong online footprint without compromise. By exploiting digital opportunities across all touch points, hugoboss.com, digital pure players and marketplaces, as well as bricks and clicks, we will grow our digital sales share to more than 25% till 2025. This means we will boost digital revenues from around EUR 400 million in 2020 to more than EUR 1 billion until 2025. To achieve this, our actions are to refresh hugoboss.com, complete the global rollout of our online store, follow a mobile-first approach, boost our digital partner business, and realize a best-in-class customer journey. Also hereby constantly drive omnichannel sales.
Enablers will be the use of analytics insights for optimization of product and sales. Data-driven decision-making as well as a best-in-class customer relationship management. The relaunch of our global online flagship, hugoboss.com, will follow our global branding refresh. We will introduce a new premium look and feel, an enhanced online brand experience, and improved technical performance to ease the navigation and buying. Furthermore, we will improve our personalized offerings and make sure to inspire and excite our customers through relevant and emotional content. Regarding the global rollout of hugoboss.com, we are already present in around 60 markets, covering the majority of the global online premium fashion market. However, it is our ambition to have hugoboss.com available to our customers in more than 120 markets.
Ultimately, we want to be online in every market where we also have an offline presence to enable a true omnichannel shopping opportunity for all our consumers. Coming to our digital business with partners, one of the most significant growth drivers for our company in the years to come. The digital partner business will represent more than 50% of our digital sales by 2025. Hence, we will focus on driving traffic and relevance for our brands on our partners' websites, be it as a concession business model or via a wholesale model. Our aim is to be flexible and scalable. Choosing the right form of cooperation on a partner-by-partner basis. Clearly, the concession model is and remains an important business model.
However, different to the past, the concession model will not necessarily be the preferred business model of cooperating with our partners in digital. Instead, we will decide on a partner-by-partner basis on what's in the best interest of our consumers, for our brands, and for our company. Another important lever that will enable us to boost digital sales across all touch points will be the implementation of a best-in-class CRM system, allowing us to drive customer loyalty across all touch points and push omni-channel sales to the next level. Why is this so important? Because omni-channel shoppers spend more. They purchase an average 70% more often than pure offline-only shoppers. This reflects how valuable it is to develop a strong omni-channel customer base by exciting customers across all touch points, online and offline, at the same time.
We therefore aim at strongly growing our omni-channel customer base over the course of the next years, seamlessly bridging the gap between all our touch points. Overall, we see the potential of a low to mid double-digit percent share of our customers to be developed into true omni-channel shoppers in the midterm. Our strong CRM capabilities, as well as the recent implementation of our Digital Campus that Dani referred to earlier, will all lead us there. Having talked about digital channels and our ambition to create a seamless customer journey, let's now move over to brick-and-mortar retail, by far our largest distribution channel in terms of sales contribution, as we strive for unleashing its full potential. As of today, and as you are already aware, we have an impressive retail network of around 1,200 physical retail touch points globally.
Our strong retail network ensures customer proximity in all major markets around the world. It is no surprise the role of physical retail has changed from points of sale to points of experience. The changing role of stores means that it's no longer just about sales per square meter, it's about sales per experience. We therefore need to bring our global store network to the next level to achieve new retail heights. What does unleashing the full potential mean for us, and how will we accomplish it? It is our ambition to grow our brick-and-mortar retail business from EUR 1.1 billion in 2022 to around EUR 2 billion till 2025. To achieve this, we will refresh our retail store network with a new store concept, bringing the clear brand differentiation alive in our stores and shops, and accelerating the full variety of a true 24/7 brand.
We will foster the experience per square meter in our stores. We will further optimize our global retail footprint, keep our outlet revenue share stable at around 20%, and ultimately drive retail productivity by 3% on an annual base. Our enablers are a dedicated store excellence management that will enthuse consumers and provide high service and hospitality levels. The implementation of a defined digital journey in our stores and using data intelligence here as well. After all, retail is the touch point with the most valuable customer interaction. Finally, a significant investment in our new store concept, something I will get to in a few minutes. First of all, let me introduce to you the fully refreshed brand new store concepts for BOSS and HUGO.
As you could see, we will roll out our new concept consistently over the coming years, starting with some first pilots in Dubai later this year. In February 2022, we will then open our first fully rebranded flagship store in London, Oxford Street, one of our future global anchor stores, with a big bang event to usher in the new era and celebrate the official launch of the rebranding and refresh at our point of sale. Overall, we expect our new store concepts to contribute significantly to developing our stores from points of sale to true points of experience. More emotional, more inspiring, more welcoming for men and women, more digital, and more productive than ever before. An important feature of our brick-and-mortar store network will be to enhance experience and excitement for digitalization, thereby fostering our omni-channel customer journey.
Digital elements within the store can be valuable, but only if they serve to boost experience or convenience of our customers. Social media walls for virtual interaction and shoppable posts, as well as virtual fitting for an enhanced wardrobing, are just a few examples that customers will find in our stores shortly. Technology such as VR and AR will be used purposefully to create value for the consumer. To really elevate our store network, we will invest more or less EUR 500 million until 2025 into brick-and-mortar. Importantly, 4/5 stores will be refreshed already by the end of 2024. Yves will talk about the implications later in his part. Let's speak about optimizing our retail footprint. Let me be very clear to you.
Driving store productivity will continue to be a decisive factor when thinking about the evolution of our store performance in the years to come. In the context of optimizing our retail footprint, we will close unprofitable stores. We will rightsize our store fleet, especially in those markets where our stores may be too big, as is the case to some extent in Europe and the Americas. To be more concrete, we consider exiting around 100 locations, making use of expiring leases, while at the same, we will most certainly add more or less 50 new stores in selected locations with a particular emphasis on Asia-Pacific. To establish a robust retail footprint in Mainland China's best properties and seek new opportunities will remain very important to us. We also see plenty of opportunities to grow our shop-in-shop business with important department stores. This is particular the case for the Americas.
Overall, our initiative to optimize our retail network will strongly contribute to drive our retail productivity by an average of around 3% on an annual base. Besides the optimization our store network, our growth will be supported by initiatives to increase traffic, to drive sell-through, and implement a more balanced timing with a buy now, wear now approach, which means that we will adjust our collection drop logic and strongly focus to have the right product mix at the point of sale. Let's now talk about brick-and-mortar wholesale and how we will reclaim our position in this channel. Our wholesale network ranges from thousands of multi-brand touchpoints over shop-in-shops to franchise stores. Now, reclaiming our position in this channel ultimately means that we want to become one of the anchor brands for our partners. To make this happen, we position ourselves as a true 24/7 lifestyle brand with our partners.
There are multiple opportunities across key department stores and platforms, from smart tailoring to casual wear and sportswear. This is where our various brand lines, BOSS Black, BOSS Orange, BOSS Green, will offer us huge opportunities. Ultimately, our ambition is to grow brick-and-mortar wholesale revenues from around EUR 500 million in 2020 to around EUR 1 billion in 2025. Our actions will include a firm commitment to product and price value, since customers are having the full brand variety at wholesale touchpoints. A competitive pricing is key. An improved brand positioning and focused offer will enable us to outperform. This also means we will regain market share in important categories. Moreover, we will strengthen relationship with key partners. We will implement a true digital sales organization and also roll out our new digital showroom.
With our top 20 customers, already today, we generate more than 40% of our wholesale sales. This clearly implicates that we need to focus and strengthen the relationship with key partners. Grow more with less. With a strong focus on our existing key partnerships, we aim at becoming the best premium apparel brand in wholesale. This means one of the top three brands at every POS where BOSS and HUGO are represented. We will be fully exploiting the casualization trend, fostering the category approach, and implementing new shop-in-shop designs to elevate our appearance here as well. Now, you have already learned today about our ambition to lead in digital. Leading in digital will clearly also be our mantra when it comes to our wholesale business. In this context, we will be implementing a digital sales organization, reducing our physical samples by 70% over the seasons and strengthening our digital showrooms.
Accelerating and simplifying the sales process will bring us from digital design to digital selling and ensure the implementation of a fast, sustainable, and efficient selling process. Our new digital showroom represents all these advantages. We will roll out this new generation of digital showroom globally for BOSS and HUGO over the next seasons. Speaking of reclaiming wholesale, let me be very clear that our wholesale partners are also committed to supporting us on that journey. The latest feedback of our partners during our sell-in seasons was really positive and encouraging. Our last two order intakes exceeded our expectations by far. The pre-spring 2022 sell-in was the strongest in our company's history, and the spring summer 2022 sell-in exceeded pre-pandemic levels by a double-digit rate. This clearly showcases that we are working on the right measures, the branding refresh, our new collections, as well as our strong focus on execution.
All resonates very well with our customers. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes my remarks on our omnichannel strategy and brings me to our fifth claim, organized for growth. From strategy to structure, which is all about translating and executing our omnichannel activities across the various regions. To do so, we are building a new omnichannel organization. We are restructuring our management hubs, adding competencies, and strengthening key roles. Most importantly, for our new sales organization, it is possible again to focus on consumers and partners, and ultimately deliver against our ambition. Let's take a closer look at our approach from a regional point of view and how we aim at rebalancing our global footprint. We will accelerate growth in the Americas, foster our leading position in Europe, and expand our footprint in Asia-Pacific. Starting with Asia-Pacific, our single largest opportunity in terms of regions.
Over there, we are striving for a low-teens CAGR until 2025. This will extend our sales share from around 15% to more than 20%. To expand our footprint in Asia-Pacific, we will continue to leverage our strong brand positioning across all varying locations. Step up the game in physical retail by growing our regional store base. We will boost digital business with a particular strong emphasis on local marketplaces and digital pure players. Strongly expand our travel business to fully leverage regional tourism and explore new opportunities, such as in the case of Hainan. Mainland China will continue to be of particular importance and will put a strong focus on the Chinese consumer also in the years to come. With regards to digital in mainland China, there still remains tremendous potential in the market. Growth is mainly coming from Tmall and JD.com.
On both platforms, we have seen high double-digit growth for quite some time now, and we remain fully committed to continuing our growth journey here. We are also evaluating additional digital and social platforms for the Chinese market to ensure we are not missing digital sales opportunities. Accelerating growth in the Americas means realizing a mid-single-digit CAGR until 2025. This will bring the region's sales share to around 20% in the medium term. To do so, we will put particular emphasis on our important U.S. business. Our key initiatives include accelerating our 24/7 brand image to attract the next generation of consumers. Fully leveraging the casualization trend. Optimizing and refreshing our store network to increase sales densities and to create true points of experience for our customers. This also includes the right sizing of several of our stores, as well as selective closings of unprofitable stores.
At the same time, we will tap opportunities with the opening of further shop-in-shops at key department stores. Last but not least, we will exploit our wholesale opportunities together with our partners with clear growth plans and commitments. With this, let's take a look at Europe. As you know already today, we own this region based on our leading position when it comes to premium apparel. Even though this is a region in which we are already very well-established, we have every confidence to realize growth in a low to mid-single-digit range. Utilizing our full action plan with growth. In Europe, we will foster our leading position by reclaiming the wholesale business, taking back on the lead in key product categories, refreshing our store fleet, and further exploiting online opportunities. As you can see, ladies and gentlemen, we are all set for a successful future.
By rebalancing our omnichannel strategy, we will generate EUR 4 billion sales by 2025, with more than EUR 1 billion coming from digital, around EUR 1 billion from brick-and-mortar wholesale, and around EUR 2 billion from brick-and-mortar retail. Our regional footprint will be more balanced by 2025, which will not only ensure we exploit our many opportunities around the globe, but also provides us more stability. In Asia-Pacific, we will grow disproportionately and drive our revenue share to more than 20%. While the Americas will contribute around 20% of revenues by 2025, Europe will remain our largest region by far, with a sales contribution of around 55%. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen. I'm now very happy to hand over to Heiko. First of all, let's have a short break.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Heiko Schäfer. I am the Chief Operating Officer at HUGO BOSS and responsible both for our global operations, that is the technical development, the production and sourcing, and the logistics of our products, as well as our sustainability initiatives. In the next 30 minutes or so, I will elaborate on our strategic initiatives within the area of operations and sustainability. Let's have a start by having a closer look at operations and how we will organize our company for growth to ultimately realize our CLAIM 5 strategy and deliver on our company's vision and objectives. Oliver already provided meaningful insights as to how we aim at exploiting our growth opportunities across the various regions. Organize for growth, however, not only means expanding our footprint across the globe, but also leveraging scale in operations.
We look at operations as the foundation, the enabler, and ultimately the platform for speed and growth. Speed will be a key element to adapt to constantly changing market conditions and to ensure we are able to react to changes in customer behavior as quickly as possible. Speed and flexibility will be crucial for the creation, sourcing, and transportation of our highest quality products in a sustainable manner. In operations, we are driven by beliefs that combine our heritage with the future. Craftsmanship and quality obsession are our true heritage. Quality is the number one reason why consumers buy our products today. Therefore, we will never compromise on quality. Something that Daniel has made very clear in his presentation as product is king.
We live this in the way we create and produce our goods in our own factories or with external partners across the globe, in Latin America and Asia, and especially in Europe, where more than 50% of our sourcing budget is spent. We constantly strive for technological solutions to further increase the efficiency and flexibility of our supply chain. The use of digital technologies is of particular importance in this regard. For example, for creating and selling our products in our digital showrooms. In addition, our own production sites in Italy and Turkey are broadening their capabilities from best-in-class quality in production to utmost speed and flexibility in the range of products manufactured there. Let's take a quick look at this video. Increasing volatility and complexity in global markets require anticipation of changes or risks more than ever before.
For instance, changes like the most recent German law on due diligence obligations in the supply chain, the upcoming EU taxonomy, or the fair wage necessities in Asian source countries. They all have been identified early on, and appropriate measures have been defined accordingly. Very clearly, the environment we operate in is getting more and more volatile, complex, and less predictable. To cope with this context and to support our ambitious growth targets, we've determined a set of key directions for change in operations that I will explain in the next 20 minutes. They are modularity, especially in product creation, enabling mass customization, working in a more data-driven manner, stronger connectivity with external partners like suppliers and logistics service providers, leading to more flexibility, resilience, and sustainability. To move in these directions, we've defined four key transformation areas that we will dive into now.
Enabling modular and digital creation, shortening creation tracks, pushing flexible production and logistics networks, as well as building a digital twin of our supply chain. Of course, cost containment and sustainability will always be underlying drivers. Let's take a look at the first one. Modular and digital creation is the first area. Over the next years, we will realize time and cost savings through the LEGO-like combination of proven and cost-optimized components of a product created in a fully digital workflow. This enables us to reduce the time needed for design and development from multiple months down to, at best, a few minutes. We're not starting from zero. Already today, around 50% of our products are developed digitally in 3D. A good example is our completely digitally developed BOSS Casual collection for the pre-fall season 2021.
It was developed in only eight weeks, demonstrating how digitalization enables us to react significantly faster to market needs. Our goal is to grow the share of digitally created products to over 90% by 2025. Increasing the share of digitally created products will also lead to shorter creation tracks. Today, it takes us on average 13 months from creation to shelf. Our goal by 2025 is to reduce this end-to-end lead time by about 30% and use more tailored processes like the quick response track we started to use last year. We used this track in 2020 to create and produce more than 700,000 pieces in between 8-12 weeks only. As you've seen from Daniel's and Oliver's presentations, we have ambitious yet realistic growth targets over the next years. This requires a global reconfiguration and expansion of our sourcing and logistics networks.
A reconfiguration also to mitigate the obvious inflationary tendencies we can observe in the raw material, labor, and transport markets in many of our source countries. Our aim is to mitigate these rising costs and keep our average unit cost of goods sold at 2019 levels. The main levers are continuing the comprehensive assortment complexity reduction, which we've started last year already, to continuously increase production efficiencies. The parallel consolidation of materials and components and the mentioned modular creation approach will further support efficiency. Moreover, our future top-line growth will drive further scale effects that we can share with our suppliers. Lastly, selective production automation and manufacturing excellence initiatives in our own factories and with external partners will contribute as well. We see especially our own factories, which already represent close to 20% of our source value, as key enablers for cost mitigation and increased flexibility.
Flexibility will also result from nearshoring, more direct deliveries, broadening our own production capabilities by extending the product mix produced there, and also flexible rerouting and allocation procedures. The volatility of the global transport markets, the increasing service needs of our omni-channel sales approach, and the increased transparency needs from sustainability viewpoint, call for a more precise and data-driven steering and tracing of the global supply chain. This starts, for instance, with demand and supply planning and ends with allocation of finished goods to channels, stores, and customers. Building a digital twin of this flow of goods is the basis for increased transparency and for better operational performance. This will ultimately result in an on-time availability of 90% or more in a post-pandemic world. Of course, across all transformation areas, sustainability is a core principle influencing each and every step in the value chain.
We set ourselves ambitious goals to deliver a measurable impact, and we'll touch upon that separately in a few minutes. We've talked a lot about the key transformation areas and operations for the next years. Why should our shareholders care? Let's sum up the main benefits from this transformation. Our initiatives, modular and digital creation, shortened creation processes, a more flexible production and logistics network, and building a digital twin of our supply chain. They will all lead to increased end-to-end transparency, faster response times to in-season trends, reduced excess inventory, increased resilience, and of course, a contained development of our cost of goods sold. As you can see, there is a direct positive impact on both the top and the bottom-line development of our company by successfully executing against our transformation areas.
With this, let's now move on to the underlying theme that touches every aspect of our CLAIM 5 strategy, sustainability. Going forward, we will be sustainable throughout our entire set of activities. Let's talk about what that means specifically. Sustainability is really not a new topic for us. It's been part of our DNA for years. At HUGO BOSS, we look at the products we create and source, the people involved in these processes, and the social standards under which they work, and the planet, especially our emissions and our resource consumption. In managing these aspects, we employ a robust organizational setup with clear responsibilities, a roadmap with annual ambitious targets. We use an anticipative approach, always having new developments on the radar, like I mentioned, the EU taxonomy or the due diligence law. In our activities, we aim to balance two aspects.
Delivering a measurable impact against our ambitious roadmap targets and taking our consumers along with us on our journey to become more sustainable and touch them on an an emotional level. The impact of our ESG activities is widely acknowledged externally. Various awards and leading scores and prominent rankings underline our track record here. As investors, you have clearly observed our performance, for example, in the DJSI rankings or potentially also the various awards our own manufacturing sites have received. We're particularly proud that in 2020, we have been included in the Dow Jones Sustainability Index World for the fourth time in a row, making us one of the three most sustainable companies in our industry. Our strong commitment is also becoming increasingly visible in our collections.
Let's therefore look at the impact on our product dimension, the most tangible evidence of our efforts to consumers. The examples in the back demonstrate that we've been pioneering sustainable products like the Piñatex sneaker or the vegan suit for years already. To quantify that, already today with the upcoming spring summer 2022 collection, around 40% of our offered styles will be defined as responsible. Just in the last 18 months, this represents around 4,000 different products that sustainability-oriented consumers can choose from. Our definition of responsible represents a pretty high standard regarding the use of sustainable materials, not using air freight, or working only in best-in-class factories. Under the planet umbrella, we will prioritize the aspect of circularity, our strong commitment to limit resource consumption and emissions moving forward. Our circularity roadmap, which you see here, has been developed diligently with the input of external experts and research partners.
Today, we pursue intensive repurpose activities. For example, the reuse of unsold materials. Additionally, we are ramping up the use of recycled materials. For instance, in some of the next collection's outerwear jackets, where we've used recycled PET bottles. Short-term, we are evaluating options for repair and resale models for HUGO BOSS products, and partnerships with external service providers to collect and discharge very old products are being formed as well. In the long term, we will be looking for closed loop recycling and biodegradation opportunities as the final building block around our circularity plans. Taken together, these activities will enable 8/10 products to be circular in one or more of the just described ways by 2030. This is our commitment to limit resource consumption. Because, as Daniel already mentioned, no planet, no fashion. There's more beyond resource consumption.
Let's look at our plans to reduce our CO2 emissions. Here, we pursue ambitious goals. By 2030, we aim for climate neutrality within our own area of responsibility before expanding this to the whole value chain. By 2045, we target net zero emissions and go above and beyond the objectives of the UNFCCC, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. There are clearly defined measures underway to realize these goals. Firstly, we have been significantly reducing our energy consumption already, and this will continue in the next years. As an example, against the base year 2018, our energy consumption decreased last year by about or by more than 20%. Secondly, we increase our use of renewable energy. More than 50% of the energy consumed by our company already comes from renewable energy sources.
We will expand this further, for instance, by installing solar panels on the rooftops of our own plants in Turkey, just as one example. Last, but certainly not least, reliable and trustworthy compensation activities with external partners are a final lever to close the emissions gap in the near future. As you can see, we have historically delivered impact in the area of sustainability and we'll intensify our efforts drastically moving forward. We've been very modest in how we've communicated about our ESG contributions and successes, especially to our consumers. In the future, we will be more active and transparent in taking consumers and trade partners along our sustainability journey, and we start to imagine a lot of things. We're really wild for the planet. We'll be more active as corporate citizens, for instance, through targeted donation activities.
We'll be collaborating more with strong external partners to protect our planet. See more and more capsule collections that are not only sustainable in themselves, but pass on a certain share of their sales to environmental protection projects. Every purchase can make a difference. Consumers can support this. Stay tuned for more news around this. You will certainly hear more about us in this context. Rounding it up, I very much hope that I could give you a glimpse about our strategy around preparing operations as the platform for speed and growth for the next years, intensifying our sustainability efforts to deliver both meaningful and measurable impact, as well as emotional engagement with our consumers. With that, I hand over to Yves. Yves, the stage is yours.
Thank you, Heiko, and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Also from my side, a warm welcome to our virtual Capital Markets Day 2021. As you know, this is my second Capital Markets Day at HUGO BOSS, and I have to say, it's truly a special one and I've been enjoying this event a lot so far. What made this day so special for me was to see our 2025 strategy come to life now, being presented by the entire management team. It is exciting to see how the different parts are fitting into each other, complementing one another, and how all of this adds up to a strong growth and free cash flow generation in the years to come.
All of today's presenters have provided you with comprehensive details how a focused approach on executing our CLAIM 5 strategy is going to strongly accelerate top-line momentum and enable us to leverage the tremendous potential of HUGO BOSS. I would like now to take a few minutes to summarize the most important levers that will drive our financial performance over the next five years. As Daniel outlined to you earlier, our CLAIM 5 strategy is putting the consumer at the core of everything we do. We are fully committed to claiming our position in the consumer's minds, and we will act more consumer-focused than ever before. The relentless execution of our strategy inevitably also impacts our financial ambitions in the years to come. First and foremost, CLAIM 5 will lead to a strong acceleration in top-line growth, with contribution coming from all parts of our business.
To fuel our price-value proposition, we are committed to investing into our product offering. This, in turn, will impact our gross margin to some extent, something I will get to you in a few minutes. We will also step up our marketing and digital investments to ensure we gain brand relevance and drive the desirability of both BOSS and HUGO. Last but not least, our global store network will experience a complete refresh over the next five years to come to ensure we bring retail to the next level and inspire the consumer at the point of sale. Investing in product, brand, digital, and retail will be important enablers to successfully execute our strategy and deliver industry-leading top-line growth in the medium term.
Consequently, over the next five years, value creation will shift somewhat from driving relative margin improvements to delivering strong top-line growth, absolute profitability improvements, as well as superior free cash flow generation. Let's now take a closer look at our financial ambition and how exactly it ties in with our CLAIM 5 strategy. Starting with the top line and our ambition to boost group sales to EUR 4 billion by 2025. Doubling the business during the next five years implies a strong CAGR of 16%, taking 2020 as the base year, and 6% as compared to the pre-pandemic level of 2019. While we recognize this is an ambitious target, it is very much realistic. Importantly, growth will be broad-based and well-balanced across all our brands, channels, as well as regions. You have already heard about the various growth drivers from our previous speakers.
Let me therefore just quickly recap what they have told you. Starting with our two brands, BOSS and HUGO. By unlocking their full potential in the years to come, both brands will make a decisive contribution to our group's growth ambition. By 2025, our BOSS menswear business will contribute around 2/3 of group sales, equaling around EUR 2.6 billion. Hence, without a doubt, our BOSS menswear business is and remains our group's flagship in terms of revenue contribution. BOSS womenswear and HUGO and our licensed business will then make up for the remaining 1/3. This implies a strong acceleration in the top-line performance of both BOSS womenswear and HUGO, which are set to contribute to revenue of around EUR 400 million and EUR 800 million. Moving on to our channels, for which Oliver has presented in detail on how we will leverage our distribution variety by combining the power of all touchpoints.
Digital will be by far our fastest-growing channel. With sales growing to more than EUR 1 billion by 2025, our digital penetration will increase to more than 25%. Importantly, and different to the past, our digital ambition includes all our digital touchpoints, from our own website, hugoboss.com, to our partner business, including digital pure plays, leading marketplaces, as well as bricks and clicks. By unleashing the full potential of our store network, brick-and-mortar retail will grow to around EUR 2 billion by 2025. Growth will be driven by an increase in store productivity of around 3% per year, as well as the further optimization and refreshing of our global store network.
I will elaborate on the financial impact of our initiatives to optimize our retail store network, and more specifically, their impact on operating leverage in just a few minutes. Last, but not certainly least, we will increase brick-and-mortar wholesale revenues to a level of around EUR 1 billion by 2025, as we are committed to reclaiming our position in this important channel. Strengthening existing partnerships and regaining market share in key product categories will all lead us there in the years to come. To complete the picture on our top line, let's also recap on our ambition by geography and how we will further balance our regional mix over the next years. Starting with Asia-Pacific and our brand's tremendous potential to grow the revenue share to more than 20% within the next five years.
As we will expand our footprint and further strengthen our brand's positioning across the region, we are confident that sales in Asia-Pacific will grow at a low teens CAGR through 2025. Mainland China will continue to be of particular importance and, no different to the past, we will put a strong focus on the Chinese consumer also in the years to come. Europe, our home turf, will remain a key priority as we are committed to fostering our leading position within the premium apparel in this important region. Against the backdrop of our strong position, we are very well confident to grow at a low to mid-single digit rate per annum. This, in turn, will bring Europe's sales share to a level of around 55% by 2025. Moving over to the Americas, where revenues are projected to grow at a mid-single digit CAGR between 2019 and 2025.
As Oliver laid out to you, we will strongly push our 24/7 brand image in the U.S. by leveraging the casualization trend across all touchpoints and by fully exploiting the wholesale opportunity. This will enable the Americas to represent around 20% of group revenues by 2025. At the end of the day, our top-line growth, of course, needs to translate into strong profit creation. We are fully committed to delivering significant improvements in profits over the next five years, while at the same time making proper investments into our business to ensure long-term sustainable success for HUGO BOSS. By 2025, we are targeting not only to double our business to EUR 4 billion in sales, but also to return to a strong EBIT margin level of 12%. This translates into a CAGR of 6% between 2019 and 2025.
The key levers of the profit improvements are directly related to our CLAIM 5 strategy, which each claim impacting different parts of our profit and loss, while ultimately enabling us to reclaim 12% operating margin by 2025. Most importantly, our investments into product, brand, and digital will be compensated by strong efficiency gains to be realized by further optimizing our global store network and leveraging operating overheads. Let's take a closer look at each and every of these five levers, starting with the gross margin. As Daniel outlined earlier, product is king and a fundamental element of our CLAIM 5 strategy. Therefore, we will step up the game and invest into our price-value proposition to win over the consumer. This means investing in truly premium quality and creating highly differentiated and innovative products to perfectly meet our customers' needs and enable our brands to capitalize on their growth opportunities.
Besides product investments, rebalancing our omni-channel activities and tapping into the respective growth opportunities will lead to channel mix being another rather dilutive gross margin factor over the next couple of years. On the positive side, however, gross margin is expected to benefit from our more balanced regional mix as growth opportunities are skewed towards higher-margin markets, such as mainland China. Last but not least, we forecast a broadly neutral contribution from sourcing, as Heiko already elaborated in detail on our potential to further drive operational excellence within our operations activities. This will enable us to more or less compensate for an anticipated cost inflation in sourcing. All of this will ultimately ensure that our gross margin will end up somewhere in between 60% and 62% by 2025, and thus more closely in line with the competitive landscapes we are operating in. Make no mistakes.
While this implies a decline compared to our pre-pandemic gross margin levels of around 65%, we regard, in particular, the product investment as an important measure to further enhance the value proposition of our product offering, thereby delivering stronger and more sustainable revenue growth. Moving over to operating expenses and starting with our marketing investments. To increase brand relevance and to win over the next generation of consumers. We are fully committed to unleash the full potential of BOSS and HUGO, as reflected by our strong claim to boost our brands. This, in turn, means that we will deliberately step up our marketing investments. Overall, incremental marketing spending will be more than EUR 100 million between now and 2025.
As a consequence, as compared to today's level of around 6% of group sales, marketing spending will see an increase of more than 100 basis points to a level of between 7% and 8%. With executing already underway as of today, the vast majority of this additional marketing budget is and will be spent on branding initiatives to fuel brand relevance and drive customer engagement, with the remainder focusing on our digital business and traffic generation in particular. Speaking about our marketing initiatives, let me also be clear that we will continue to focus on less but bigger initiatives going forward in order to drive marketing effectiveness, while at the same time aiming for a higher return of investments in terms of improving marketing efficiency. Another important claim we already learned about today is lead in digital.
Our goal is to become a consumer-focused and data-driven company and the premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide. Digital has already started to revolutionize our industry, it will continue to do so. Digitizing our business model along the entire value chain will therefore be crucial to sustainably increasing customer value and to improve efficiency and flexibility. On that, our Digital Campus that Daniel already talked about will offer us tremendous opportunities in the years to come. Most importantly, execution is already happening with our Digital Campus operating as we speak. We are clearly putting the pedal to the metal as we step up our investments into digital by more than EUR 150 million by 2025, implying an increase of around 400 basis points towards a share of around 8% of group net sales.
As our investments into product, brand, and digital are all intended to accelerate top-line growth to ultimately to reach EUR 4 billion in sales by 2025, let us now take a closer look at our various efficiency measures aimed at balancing these investments to deliver on our bottom-line ambition of an EBIT margin of 12%. Starting with the optimization of our store network, which perfectly ties in our fourth strategic claim to rebalance omnichannel. As we strive for unleashing the full potential of retail, we will step up the game in this important channel. Further optimizing our global store fleet and transforming our stores from point of sales to points of experience will ensure we increase our store productivity by an average of around 3% per annum.
This, in turn, will enable us to boost brick-and-mortar retail sales to around EUR 2 billion by 2025, as Oliver already alluded to. Our initiatives to optimize our retail network include relocating and rightsizing stores with particular focus on Europe and the U.S., expanding our retail footprint in Asia Pacific. While we consider exiting around 100 locations with expiring lease contracts in the next couple of years, we will almost certainly also be adding around 50 exciting new sites in selected locations. On top of that, we will also continue to renegotiate rental contracts for our approximately 1,200 retail points of sale with our dedicated real estate team, deciding on a case-by-case basis and in close alignment with Oliver and myself on what's in the best interest on HUGO BOSS.
Overall, and taking the targeted 3% productivity increase into account, we expect our store network optimization initiatives to generate operating leverage of around 700 basis points by 2025, thereby significantly reducing the share of retail costs to 90% of group sales. Finally, and in order to grow in line with our ambition, we need to organize for growth. Our fifth strategic claim, which is all about efficiency, flexibility, and speed. Through a combination of the enhanced use of digitization, the rollout of shared services, and based on our lean organizational setup, we will not only be able to compensate for cost inflation, but also to further improve our operational efficiency. In this context, we will also continue our ongoing tight overhead cost management in G&A, as well as in our back-of-house within our sales and business unit areas.
As our business grows, this approach will lead to significant leverage in the years to come with our targeted cost savings more than offsetting additional investments, such as in logistics. Altogether, this translate into operating overhead leverage of around 200 basis points with respective expenses totaling around 14% of group sales by 2025. This brings me to some of our key balance sheet and cash flow items, starting with CapEx. To support the group's growth trajectory, we will continue to invest into our store network and into our digital capabilities. As Oliver already outlined earlier, retail will be the major building block of our CapEx budget. We will invest a total of around EUR 500 million in our global store network over the next five years, as we intend to renovate and refresh four out of five stores during the next three years.
Investments in our store network will therefore be rather front than back-loaded. Besides retail, our company's digital capabilities will continue to perform the other major part of investments, supporting us to realize our claim to lead in digital. Consequently, by 2022, CapEx will go back to pre-pandemic levels of between 6% and 7% of sales. Starting in 2025, we forecast CapEx to come down to a level of around 4%-5% of sales, reflecting that until then, the majority of retail investments will lie behind us. This brings me to trade net working capital. Optimizing trade net working capital will be another key priority during the next five years. More specifically, we regard a range of 16%-19% of sales as sustainable, and we are confident that we will be able to bring trade net working capital down to this corridor by 2022 already.
Improvements will predominantly be realized by putting particular emphasis on an efficient and lean inventory management, as reflected by our firm commitment to improve the average inventory turn to 2x by 2025, as compared to 1.6x back in 2019. Achieving this target will be supported by a further optimization of our global merchandise management for both our warehouses and on our sales floors, continuous improvement of sell-through rates in retail, as well as the further reduction of lead times in our collection development process. Finally, on free cash flow. As you know, the business model of HUGO BOSS is highly cash generative, and we will make sure it will remain so also in the years to come.
I have every confidence that based on the relentless execution of our CLAIM 5 strategy, we will generate cumulated free cash flow of around EUR 2 billion in the next five years. The acceleration in top line growth that we are targeting, the improvements we aim for when it comes to trade net working capital, and the smart and efficient use of CapEx will all enable us to continue investing and growing over the long term, while at the same time generating strong free cash flow. Ladies and gentlemen, in the end it all comes down to value creation, and this is what CLAIM 5 is all about. It's about a balanced approach to growth investments and shareholder return. Our capital allocation framework underpins exactly that, as it follows a clear prioritization of cash usage to guarantee that we deliver sustainable long-term growth and strong returns for our shareholders.
Our capital allocation framework is therefore set around four priorities in the following order. First and foremost, and without compromise, we are firmly committed to reinvesting into our business to drive organic growth for our company and to double our business by 2025. Secondly, it contains a strong commitment to returning cash to our shareholders. Our future dividend policy, which is looking for a payout ratio between 30% and 50% of net income attributable to shareholders, will ensure we have the flexibility needed to invest in our business and to drive long-term growth. Importantly, our commitment also stands for a reliable dividend policy aimed towards continuity as we are targeting progressive dividend payments year by year.
Thirdly, to deliver against our vision of becoming the premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide, we also consider strategic investments by thoughtfully tapping into M&A opportunities as part of our CLAIM 5 strategy, be it in terms of product excellence, geographical footprint, or digital capabilities. Finally, in the event of excess liquidity, we also consider special dividends or share buybacks as viable alternatives to return cash to our shareholders. Before I come to an end, let me briefly summarize our financial ambition and the targets that we have set out today. By 2025, we will double group sales as compared to 2020 to a level of EUR 4 billion. As compared to pre-pandemic levels of 2019, our top line ambition is implying a robust CAGR of 6%.
At the same time, we are targeting a strong EBIT margin of 12% by 2025, which translates into an EBIT CAGR of around 6%. Investments into our business will be funded by operating leverage generated via the optimization of our store network, as well as realizing efficiency within operating overhead. Finally, over the next five years, we will continue to generate strong cash, as reflected in our ambition to generate cumulated free cash flow of around EUR 2 billion between 2021 and 2025. The successful execution of our CLAIM 5 strategy, together with our highly cash-generating business model and our strong focus on capital efficiency, are set to significantly increase shareholder return in the years to come. I would like to conclude by emphasizing once again that CLAIM 5 is to be regarded as our growth plan that will enable us to deliver on our company's vision.
At HUGO BOSS, we are committed and prepared to accelerate top-line growth, claim our position in the consumer's minds, and win market share based on our strong brands, BOSS and HUGO. At the same time, CLAIM 5, together with our robust and diverse business model, yields to a strong free cash flow generation. This will be the foundation for delivering sustainable long-term value for our shareholders. Thank you very much. Now it's on you, Daniel, to take over. Thank you.
Thank you, Yves, for the presentation. It's great to see how CLAIM 5 strategy will lead to strong top and bottom-line improvements in the years to come and create significant returns for our shareholders. Let me now guide you through how we will ensure we successfully deliver against our vision and ambition by consequently executing our strategy and empowering our global people and teams. CLAIM 5 puts the consumer at the core of everything we do. It accelerates relevance by revitalizing our brands, both brands. It's a growth strategy that we present to you today. Our position in 2025, and our commitment will be that we are again be back under the top 100 global brands, and we're going to boost our sales to EUR 4 billion, and our EBIT margin will be around 12%.
We're going to streamline our organizational structure in a kind of a matrix organization, where all the business units, all the departments, and all the countries are working together. They're going to discuss, decide, and deliver in this matrix organization. Our Managing Board structure remains more or less the same. There are some shifts on the responsibility in marketing and product, but the rest remains the same. How are we going to drive execution? First, with rigorous execution of CLAIM 5, with execution governance, with regular updates that we know where we are, with proactive performance alerts in real time. We're going to see that clearly. We know when it is red, we know that we have to do something. Also with accountability and ownership. We translate CLAIM 5 to respective functional strategies. All business owners translate the overall CLAIM 5 strategy to their business.
We keep also up to date on CLAIM 5 progress. All businesses owners update on the progress of CLAIM 5 on a regular basis. There's always the moment where we clearly understand where we stand with the business in regards to CLAIM 5. This CLAIM 5 is going to be executed by 15,000 employees from 110 nationalities, and from that 50% women are in the leadership positioning. We do that together. We do it all together with these 15,000 employees. We also going to implement kind of a new culture where we're going to create success through a clear vision with great competence and very strong leadership. Our values will be based on a few points. First, most importantly, on trust. Speed for trust will make things much better and much faster. We also, in our mindset, it's going to be entrepreneurial spirit. Entrepreneurials.
We're going to have personal ownership. We have a good team mentality. We're going to simplify and execute in a qualitative way, and we're going to remain our useful spirit. It's a clear mindset shift that we will have. We're going to do that in the right timing, which is now, and we do it with a lot of energy. Therefore, we're going to be brave. We're going to be bold. We want to be innovative. We're going to be a team. We're going to be impulsive. We're going to be fast. We're going to be loving. We're going to be the reason, and we're going to have fun. We're going to be the pulse of the industry, because we're going to be HUGO and we're going to be BOSS.
Change is the only law of life, and those who look only to the past or present are certain to miss the future.
That film summarized quite well what we just presented. As you can see, we have tremendous potential, and it's time to unlock it. Together with the right mindset and the right timing, we will create the power and energy to claim back the lead and to claim our position in the industry. Together, we will become the premium tech-driven fashion platform worldwide. There is no time to lose. The time is right now. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's presentation around CLAIM 5, our strategy that will take us back to new heights and over the next five years. Together with my board colleagues, I'm looking forward to seeing you back in a couple of minutes when we will answer your questions. Thank you very much for listening.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I very much hope you have been enjoying this event so far. We already have received a lot of questions from you. Of course, you still have time to add more questions during the upcoming Q&A session. In total, we have planned to spend 45 - 60 minutes with you during that question-and-answer session. We are ready to start. Let's go straight into it. The first question comes from Elena Mariani from Morgan Stanley. Daniel, to better understand where you want to take the brand, it would be interesting to hear your views on what has gone wrong in the past and what is the problem with the brands today.
Thank you, Elena. That's a tough question, to talk about the past. Let me say, in my presentation I made before, I said first that actually everything is here, that HUGO BOSS is a fantastic opportunity because everything was once built and everything was already existing. I think after that came a moment where the brand had some difficulties, where it had other priorities. As an example, they were more focusing on retail. They were more focusing in China to bring it to a luxury brand. I think that was not very well executed in balance. Maybe also over the past few years, the age of the HUGO BOSS consumer has grown too far, and there was not enough added to gain young consumers. As you have seen in the strategy, this has completely changed.
Actually, we're going to balance, for example, the retail, the wholesale, the digital sales, call it omni-channel. Actually, there we balance. We have a clear vision to continue to have the brand as a premium lifestyle brand. That's where we aim, and that's where we believe that is our sweet spot. We believe also the investments we have today to do the brand and the plan we have, which goes into the brand, into the product, into the retail expansion, to the digital. We have today a lot to invest and will invest into the brand. On top of that, it's all about the execution, because you can have the best strategy, if you don't have a team that is able to execute those plans, you will not get there. That's what I found today.
First of all, we have a clear strategy, we have a clear mission, vision, and a bold ambition, but we have also an excellent team in place that can take, first of all, that agrees on the strategy that is behind, that signed, that takes the ownership also in the respective part. I'm really convinced that this time we will be successful.
Great. The second question also comes from Elena Mariani from Morgan Stanley, and it's also for you, Daniel. Do you see the potential or are there potential risks around the reinstatement of multiple sub-brands? Wouldn't this be confusing? The previous management successfully exited Orange, Green. Why going back to the previous brand architecture?
Well, first of all, I want to make clear that we still have two brands. We have the platform is HUGO BOSS, and on that platform, we have BOSS and we have HUGO, and that nothing is changing. Now, we believe that I'm not sure if this was successfully executed, because actually, when you don't have the sub-brands, you also lose the positioning of the brand. I make an example. If you are in a department stores and you only have BOSS Black, what was concentrated, you only basically have one positioning where you have to add all the products. In future, and as of now, we can actually position with BOSS Orange and with BOSS Green, we can have a multiple position.
Therefore, we think it's actually a great opportunity and absolutely less confusing because you will find in this, for example, shop-in-shops, you will find BOSS Black, you find BOSS Orange, which is casual, and BOSS Green, and BOSS Green, which is in the different parts of that department stores. For us, this is just a possibility to boost sales in different areas. For me, it's actually less confusing than before, because if you have one shop and you add all these labels, then it's confusing, and that's what we do exactly the opposite. We believe it's going to be much more sharp, it will be much more clear, and it will be a big opportunity to grow sales.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question comes from Jürgen Kolb from Kepler Cheuvreux. The question again is for you, Daniel. In one of the first slides, you showed a house of brands with a free spot between BOSS and HUGO. Do you think HUGO BOSS needs a new brand to ensure growth? If so, would this be included in your forecasts?
We absolutely don't need new brands to grow. This is organic growth, what we presented today. Clearly, again, we want to focus in the next two years, at least, we want to focus on HUGO and we want to focus on BOSS. We clearly said there is so many opportunities, and we called about a comeback. First we want to play that comeback, and we have so many opportunities to grow in BOSS and in HUGO that we don't need at the moment another brand. However, I think there is going to be a lot of opportunities going forward that there will be brands that would make sense in the future to acquire or to implement into our platform. Again, this is not our priority today. We have two wonderful, we have two great brands with a big potential that we focus all together first.
Thank you. Another question from Jürgen Kolb. This is for you, Heiko.
Which role will the production facility in Izmir play going forward? Will it be expanded to gain speed?
Yeah, Jürgen, thanks for the question. I'm not sure you're aware, Izmir already today is by far our biggest supplier. It's by a factor of two bigger in value terms than our next biggest supplier. Very clearly, the idea is to give Izmir, our own factory, a stronger role in the future as well, in order to not only have cost transparency also for discussions with external vendors, but as you said, also to be more flexible and be able to respond to market changes, specifically in Europe. We started to prepare for that last year already. We started the casualization also of that factory, when we began the production of leisure trousers and light casual outerwear. This year, we started the production of jerseys or polos, T-shirts, and so on in Izmir, again, in the context of nearshoring as part of the CLAIM 5 strategy.
We began to prepare for that already.
Thank you, Heiko. The next question is for Oliver, and it's coming from Elena Mariani from Morgan Stanley again. Oliver, what is your view on HUGO BOSS' current outlet footprint? Outlets are generating more than 30% of retail sales at the moment. How should we expect this percentage to evolve towards 2025?
Thanks for the question, Elena. Our outlets are playing a crucial role in our omni-channel journey. They are just now another touch point to our end consumer.
On the other side also with the outlet, we are reaching, most of the time also, a new consumer. It's the first touchpoint for new consumers that is then generating sales over, moving over to our full-price business. Also, it's very attractive for a very young consumer. Our plan is that the outlet share will be for our total group sales at 20% approximately in the next five years.
Thank you, Oliver. Now we have a question from Christian Salis, ODDO BHF, and this is a question for Yves. Yves, in one of the last earnings calls, you mentioned sustainable rental cost savings of 10%-20% related to the pandemic. Would you confirm this statement right now? How much of this is reflected in your midterm targets?
Well, as I alluded to during my presentation, we clearly see that we have a lot of potential regarding store optimization program. It's about closing unprofitable stores. It's about rightsizing stores. Clearly, the renegotiation part during the pandemic plays one big role into this. Overall, and this is included in the plan, we want to somehow improve our fixed cost ratio to group net sales by 700 basis points. This kind of renegotiations successes that we experienced during the pandemic is included in the medium-term plan.
Thanks, Yves. Another question for you, Yves, coming from Antoine Belge from Exane BNP. What will be the shape of the EBIT margin recovery from 2021 until 2025? Is it going to be linear?
Well, what we see is that we're going to have a constant improvement year-over-year. Of course, because of the big uncertainties we see here and there, perhaps some uncertainties and some fluctuations. Overall, we will see a gradual linear improvement over the next years to come. I think this is a fair assumption.
Great. Thank you. The next question, again, from Christian Salis. Daniel, this is for you, I guess. The capsule collections with Russell Athletic and the NBA have been a great success. Could you please talk about future collaborations, and are you going to exchange current collaborations eventually?
Thank you for these questions again, and you are completely right, Christian. The Russell Athletic and the NBA have been a huge success. That was actually a first statement to target a younger consumer for HUGO BOSS, which also happened. Immediately when these capsule collection were out, actually, it was a great success, and actually it also got into a mindset of a new customer, exactly the one we are looking for. We will definitely going to continue with both of them in the future. Now you ask me what's coming new, and we are evaluating at the moment what exactly we can do and where we're going to go. I showed in my presentation that there are a lot of possibilities, also in different areas to do collaborations, sometimes maybe outside of the fashion industry.
We will play, we will look into different ways what we can do. The list so far, and actually in that short time for companies, partners that are interested to collaborate with us is actually quite big. We are looking in all of them, and we check all these offers, what we can do with each of them and make sure that with the strategy we talked, that all of these partnerships, collaborations will also fit into our strategy going forward, but there's definitely, you can expect more to come.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question is coming from Kathryn Parker from Jefferies. The question is related to tailoring, so probably for you, Heiko. How many stores will offer BOSS Made to Measure, and will there be a replacement of BOSS Made for Me or a hybrid off the peg and fully tailored suits?
I think, as of today, it's about 30 stores worldwide that offer our Made to Measure program. It's manufactured in Germany, and a lot of the demand comes from Asia. I think for the future, Oliver would be the best person to talk about that. If you talk about the additional point that you mentioned, Made for Me, earlier on, we talked about the modular creation approach, which is basically a platform for Made for Me, so mass customization type offers to our consumers. The idea for that would be in the final stage to obviously offer it not only via stores, but also online, which is something that we're preparing with this modular creation approach.
Thank you, Heiko. The next question, again, coming from Jürgen Kolb in the direction of Daniel. Daniel, with the CLAIM 5 strategy, has the view on the main competitors changed at all?
No. Absolutely not. I had a slide that I showed our main competition. I also saw in the premium and affordable luxury segment. There were the luxury brands, and there were also the sport brands in it, and we are clearly positioned in the premium, affordable group of brands. These brands were always our competition. Even in my previous company, HUGO BOSS was the main competition, and now it just has changed. We know exactly who is our competition today. As you have seen, and if you remember that chart, we were just a bit too much on the left side, and our intention is to really move HUGO BOSS to the right side. That is clearly our aim to do.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question is coming from Thomas Chauvet from Citi. It's a gross margin related question, so I would first hand it over to you, Yves, and then eventually Daniel wants to add something. Back in 2018 and 2019, you invested in product quality while leaving BOSS prices unchanged and cutting HUGO prices in order to improve value for money proposition. How different are the investments in product quality this time, and why are you not using these to drive higher ASP and protect gross margin?
Well, thank you very much, Thomas, for the questions. First of all, to clarify this, yes, we had investments in the BOSS quality and in the quality of the product, but this was clearly related to casual products at that time, so it was not broad based. What we are talking here is about in order to fuel our growth, because we are at the end, we have a growth story. We are very much convinced that we have to improve the price value proposition of our products, and that's the reason why we go more for love to details when it comes to products, so that this is really at the end visible for the end consumer. There's more to offer in terms of price value proposition. Actually, we have not included this. Any price increases have not been included in our budget.
I mean, we are working in a kind of competitive environment, so it was not so far included, but this is always a kind of upside, perhaps in the future if inflation really might hit the whole apparel market.
Thank you, Yves. The next question now coming from Rogério Fujimori from Stifel. What level of market growth for the global premium apparel market do you assume when setting your 2025 sales ambition? This would give us a sense of the magnitude of market share gains embedded in your 2025 targets. Thank you. I would eventually hand over this question to Daniel or Yves, maybe one of the two of you wants to take that one.
Well, I think for our brand, again, coming back to clearly our competition and that we are positioned in the premium and affordable luxury. What happened to HUGO BOSS in the past, which was a clear North Star for that competition, which was the best brand in class, who actually was very strong, was very successful in terms of product, in terms of marketing, in terms of distribution. Everything was there, HUGO BOSS just lost in that area. What we are trying to do and what we're trying to push is to gain market shares in the coming years. In going back into the wholesale distribution and actually gain shares in the department stores. This is a clear strategy we already shown previous, I think maybe Oliver can add to that even more.
There's, without a question, a lot of opportunity for us. We've clearly clarified in our omni-channel strategies where we see a lot of growth potential for us. I think we've shared it in our presentation. Wholesale is one growth driver, without a question, with all the initiatives, casualization, sportswear, the whole 24/7 lifestyle brand approach, top to toe, but also talking about the whole digitalization. Our own hugoboss.com will be a major growth driver, and also, we see a lot of appetite and also possibilities to grow with our digital partner and platforms.
Thank you.
Perhaps to conclude, I mean, regarding our assumptions regarding the market growth, it's between low single-digit to mid single-digit. This means from 1%-6%. If we want to have a CAGR of 6% coming from 2019, this means that we're going to gain market share. Clearly, this is our ongoing consumption. We will be better than the market and we will go faster than the market.
Thank you. Another question from Philipp Frey. The question is for you, Daniel. How should we think about the timing of the investments in the price value proposition? Is this a gradual approach that we are going to see? Or is it all at once with the upcoming spring-summer 2022 collection?
It's always a gradual implementation because that has nothing to do with the brand, because it's also in the past, in my previous experience and going forward, you always, and every season, every year and every day nearly, you have to improve, you have to upgrade, you have to get better. We always say what was good yesterday might be not good enough for tomorrow. I think that everything what we do is really putting a product that is continuously improving. You ask me when you can see that's the big surprise. That's what is so incredible. Everything, or not everything, but a lot, the new logo, the new colors, better price value, has already been implemented in the collections that we sell now for spring 2022.
We clearly have incredible results already because at the moment we have all our customers coming and buying this collection, and they clearly see that has been already successfully implemented, all these steps that we talked about from Ingo and his team into the product. Clearly the first touch point, the first going live is happening in December and January, where all this product, this new product development has an improvement and also with younger point, feeling has been done, and you will see that already December and January in the stores. You want to add something, Ingo?
No, that's correct. I mean, we worked very hard on the new branding. We still believe that the new logo and the branding with, as you could see also in the movies with black, white, and camel, is really also more attractive to a younger customer and the new branding as well. We are super happy, and as you said, we have the numbers, or there are customers in right now and see also happy faces around us. That's what makes us happy.
Thank you.
Thanks, Daniel and Ingo. The next question is coming from Thomas Chauvet, again, from Citi, and it's related to capital allocation and M&A. I think it's probably a question for Daniel. The question is, M&A is now being one of your priorities in terms of capital allocation. What are your M&A ambitions? What type of targets are you looking at? Whether cash grab brands or manufacturing capabilities?
Thanks again, Thomas, for the question. I think, as I mentioned before, we have a clear focus, we have a clear focus on what we have, that's a clear focus on what we need to build and want to build, the clear focus is on this strategy. Now, if we go into the M&A, which will become interesting for us, we definitely look into it after we have a clear comeback and gain market shares and are back on track with HUGO and BOSS. I think then we're going to look in what is possible, this could be brands or companies in different areas. Production, I think we have a setup already. We have a successful setup. I want to also say that is a clear competitive advantage that we have.
As Heiko already mentioned, what we have in Izmir is a clear advantage, and we're going to use it also for personalization and also the in-house production that we already have. I'm not sure if this is our priority to look, but at that moment when we start the M&A, I think we will be open-minded to all the propositions that are out there, but I would think maybe more in brands that become available. As we know, there is quite a lot of offers on the market. I think we cannot be more specific at the moment than that, because we have our priorities on these two brands now.
Thanks, Daniel. The next question coming from Elena Mariani, again, from Morgan Stanley. Yves, what is the expected phasing of the revenue growth and EBIT margin progression over the next five years? Is it reasonable to assume that growth for both items will be more back-end loaded after an initial period of investment and margin compression?
This is what you cannot assume. First of all, I think I already alluded to the kind of EBIT development, that you're going to see a kind of constant improvement year-over-year in terms of EBIT margin. Regarding EBIT margin, I want to make one thing clear. I rather have EUR 4 billion in net sales and a 12% margin than EUR 3 billion in net sales and 13% margin. What we're going to do is clearly want to grow. We want to be more relevant to the end consumer, and that is why we are investing to the business. At the same time, we want to improve our absolute EBIT and of course our EBIT return every year.
Regarding net sales, I think it's not back-end loaded because you still have to consider that we're going to have in 2022 and furthermore, a kind of recovery of the business because of, we've seen, of course, some lockdowns, especially in our biggest geographic area like Europe. There will be a kind of recovery over there. I think that's clear. On the other side, I have to say, I'm not giving any guidance for 2022 now.
Great. Thank you. The next question, another question from Kathryn Parker is for you, Oliver. Please, could you provide further details on which online concession businesses you expect to drive most growth with, and whether penetration by geography will be equally balanced?
Thanks for the question, Kathryn. As you've seen, the digital sales is, from a strategic point of view, very important for us. Our ambition goal is to grow this channel to EUR 1 billion in the next five years. We have a lot of potential. We see some great results, and it doesn't matter if it's now marketplaces, pure players, or bricks and clicks. We are carefully also now checking case by case, partner by partner and also by region, what is best for us as a company, which business model is for us best. Is it full concession? Is it wholesale? Which model makes the most sense for us as a company and for our consumers?
We see a lot of tremendous growth opportunities here, especially for sure in the Asian Pacific area, talking about Tmall, talking about JD.com, but also for sure, sitting here in Europe with the Zalando About You or the ASOS. A lot of great potentials, and we also see there will be equity shifts by region over the next five years.
Thank you very much. The next question coming from Antoine Belge. It's related to gross margin, so it's for Yves. The question is, why will be channel mix dilutive to gross margin given the surge of online? By how many basis points?
Overall, the gross margin is dilutive by channel mix because of the growing wholesale business. We are saying we will have a kind of EUR 1 billion in net sales regarding wholesale, and we're going to have more than EUR 1 billion in digital. In the digital area, more than 50% comes from wholesale. Taking all this together, this means EUR 1.5 billion is coming out of the wholesale business out of our EUR 4 billion of net sales, and this is somewhat gross margin dilutive.
Thank you. The next question coming from Geoffroy de Mendez from Bank of America Merrill Lynch. The question is related to womenswear. Daniel, I will hand that over to you. Revenues for womenswear have not grown between 2013 and 2019, and the previous strategic plan de-emphasized that part of the business. What makes you confident that you will now be able to double revenues and reach your EUR 400 million b y 2025?
Okay, good question. Clearly, we said that womenswear is going to be a priority for this company. First of all, we have to identify who is our target group. We have to identify who we're going to target with our collections. I also showed, or mentioned at least in the presentation, that our women's consumer grown in the past far too old, and was actually 45. This is a clear part where we have to attract a younger consumer, which we have all in place with our marketing campaigns coming up. The consumer should be 5-10 years younger. That is a fact that we need to address. The second point that we already have addressed is that we put somebody new in the lead of womenswear, somebody who is experienced in the market, somebody who did it and understands womenswear inside out.
I think to add this, the expertise in womenswear will help us to boost womenswear in the different categories. The third point, I'm convinced this has to do with distribution. Because when you do womenswear, you also have to show it in retail. You also have to show it in digital. You also have to show it in every touch point of the end consumer. We definitely have a plan in place that womenswear becomes also relevant again for our own distribution, but we also going to implement it again into our partners, department stores or any customers that we have, and we make it a part of the whole proposition of the 360 of HUGO BOSS. I am therefore very convinced that this time we're going to hit the womenswear target as well.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question is coming from Jürgen Kolb from Kepler Cheuvreux. It's related to management compensation. Daniel, again for you. How is management being incentivized on reaching the CLAIM 5 targets?
I think we have the standard approach here. First of all, we have all a base salary, we have the short-term incentive, and we have the long-term incentive. This is just based on how we are able to build market share and how we can build this brand. That you will see clearly then also in the share price. When the share price goes up, we all will be incentivized with this. I don't know what else I can say more about that, but that's what we aim to do, and that's clearly the targets for that are set up in CLAIM 5.
I think we have elaborated during our AGM a compensation system that has achieved a great approval under the investors. Actually, there are no changes regarding the compensation system. One thing is clear, we clearly have a full alignment between investors and management because both parties profit from an increasing share price. Even the obligation for us to have shares, so we are all here, the whole management team, we are all shareholders, so we have the alignment with the investors, and so we want the share price to grow in the next years to come.
Absolutely.
Thank you. Another question from Geoffroy de Mendez. Daniel, can you comment on the business mix evolution between casual and formal wear? What is it today, and what do you think it could be by 2025? Are you confident you can grow the suits part of your business compared to 2019?
We talked about the share. Definitely at the moment after the pandemic, the share of formal wear has decreased and the share of casual wear has absolutely increased. I want to make it clear again, we, as of today, we should not be seen as just a formal wear brand. We are a 24/7 lifestyle brand. We are not dependent only on formal wear, and we are not only dependent now on casual wear, it's in the mix. That's one point I want to emphasize. The other point is, today is a certain suit that is in fashion, but we believe that we already in the current collection, we have the suit for the future. The suit for the future is much more comfortable. It has stretch in it. It has features in it. It has more details in it. It could be waterproof.
It could be wrinkle-free. It is something that we already have in the current collection. Actually, in the suit of the future, which has also innovative fabrics, you basically can go hiking, you can go on your bike, you can even sleep in your suits, and you don't have to wear any sport clothes anymore when you go into the plane. Actually, you can wear a business suit from us, and you will still be dressed nicely, but very comfortable. We believe that this is the kind of the future of the suit business. On top, I need to say that the casual business, as we know, is expanding. Now since this season, we have a clear collection that is targeted to the casual consumers, which is BOSS Orange. That has all the product groups in there.
Basically, you can wear on the weekends, you can wear after working. On top of that, we have the athleisure which you can go golfing or you can wear in any occasion. Again, 24/7, dressing from head to toe, that's what we have already in the showrooms.
Thank you, Daniel. There's another question for you coming from Chiara Battistini from JPMorgan, and it's related to product investments aimed at improving the price-value proposition. The question is, Daniel, can you please elaborate on the pricing position you envisage for both HUGO and BOSS relative to competitors?
Yeah. We have clearly set the competitor area. We know who we have to target. The second point I want to make clear is that we are not decreasing our prices. Absolutely not. We keep our price frame that we have today. The only thing we do is we actually trend up our product, and we actually add more value to the product so the price value will increase. On top of that, we balance better entry price, mid-price, and high price. Actually, we have there a clear proposition. That's where digital and data also come in place. We have a dynamic pricing that we do. Clearly, we are not changing the frame of our pricing. We just add more quality into our product to be able to have a better price value.
As Yves already mentioned, that's an investment that we do, and therefore, you see our gross margin also diluting there a bit because we invest into the product. Product is king. Product is the future. If the product is not what the end consumer is looking for, we will not get there. We took that as a priority, even the gross margin would go down, and you said it clearly, you'd rather have a gross margin of 62 of a EUR 4 billion company than a higher gross margin from a lower top line. I think that makes it clear that this is a great investment for us.
Thank you. The next question coming from Philipp Frey again. It's related to royalties. Daniel, I guess also for you in that case. Can you please talk a bit about the drivers of the expected growth in royalties? You're targeting EUR 200 million in revenues by 2025. Is there an increase in royalties included?
There, I actually probably, if I understand the question right, the royalties, the license that we talk about.
Yes, license, sorry.
Okay.
License.
Well, that's the beauty here, that I can talk about all the opportunities. We have definitely opportunities to drive also our license business. We're going to look into that. We're going to expand our license business. We're going to go into more license. I'm not only talking about product, but also geographically into license. The good thing is we don't only have to look for license for BOSS, we can look into license also for HUGO. We can add, I'm just mentioning a few, we can add cycling, we can add horse riding, we can add tennis, we can add anything, but we don't want to do that ourself. We want to give that to the specialists, and therefore, we think that our royalty incomes from a product point of view will definitely increase.
Of course, we're going to also improve with all the marketing money we spend with our existing licenses. There is room to improve. I think there is a lot to gain. The same is on the geographical licenses which we elaborate together with Oliver, where we can really boost the business, maybe better with license partner together. There we look by region, what is possible, what can we do, and where it makes sense, also go with license. We believe the income on license can only improve, which we clearly also have shown in our CLAIM 5 strategy.
Great. Thank you. Just one clarification that Kathryn Parker is asking for related to the womenswear business. Daniel, you talked about it a minute ago. Do you mean you have already recruited someone, or are you looking for a high-profile creative director to join the team?
No, we have a business unit already. We have Kristina Szasz, which will join us as of next month. She's the Head of the Business Unit, and she is on the creative side. She is at the moment. We are hiring somebody. I think there is already a list of three great partners that will join us, or possibility that they will join us.
Great. Thank you. The next question coming from Elena Mariani again. It's also related to some potential management changes or people changes. Daniel, the question is for you. Are you expecting to hire new line managers in the functions that are core to your CLAIM 5 strategy, for example, in digital or in retail? Or do you see the current setup as appropriate to drive the brand transformation?
When I arrived here, when I met all the teams, when I met all the management team, I was really, and I said that also in my presentation, I was impressed what kind of professionalism, what kind of spirit I found here. In the management team, not only in the management team, but in all the layers. First of all, I think we have a lot of great proposition internally. Maybe we can shift internally most of it and give people the opportunity to move in a new management function. On the other hand, we have changed a few, or we streamlined our organizational chart already in some areas. Omnichannel, which we are looking into it and to find a candidate there, but also in online, we already find somebody that is doing also in the sales.
We shifted some org chart, but it's actually more a shifting than we need to hire, because the talents are mostly, we can take internally.
Thank you, Daniel. The next question is for you, Yves. It's coming from Chiara Battistini again from JPMorgan. Yves, please, can you break down in more detail the drivers of the 700 basis points improvement in margin you expect from store optimization? What sales transfer rate have you embedded from store closures?
What we said here in my presentation is we have today, like 450 freestanding stores. We're going to close over this next period of time, next year, around 100 stores, and we're going to open 50 stores. This gives us 400 freestanding stores at the end. Actually, this kind of optimization program, we have already started this two years ago, and I'm always saying, like we have 450 freestanding stores, an average lease time of around four to five years. This means we touch 110 -1 20 stores every years with some termination of contracts. We will clearly decide if we want to close the store, right-size the store, or invest into the store.
This is clearly the implication that we can see by closing unprofitable stores, by right-sizing oversized stores, especially now, we want to create, in the future, a kind of digital point of experience. We talk about experience per square meter, so we don't need brand temples of 800 sq m or 250 sq m per store is enough. We have some right-size potential there. This gives us, overall, a much better fixed cost relation to net sales at the end. Plus, on top of this, we want to improve our sales productivity by 3% because we're going to heavily invest into the store concept. This means there will be more net sales with less stores, and this will drive, overall, the profitability of those stores, and this gives us overall 700 basis points, which is a huge effect.
By the way, this gives us less vulnerability regarding fixed costs or variable costs in terms of our cost structure.
Great. The next question from Thomas Chauvet is somehow related to that, I guess. Yves, you're guiding for EUR 2 billion in brick-and-mortar retail sales by 2025, which implies about a 10% sales CAGR from 2021 consensus. With 3% improvement in store productivity, which you just mentioned, does this mean you expect 5 - 6 percentage points from new space?
Here, clearly, we talk about 3% store productivity gains. The CAGR starts actually in 2019. Overall, we talk about space as well in terms of shop and department stores. Overall, there will be a slight increase in space, but it will not be around this 5%-6% in terms of retail space.
Thank you, Yves. Our last question for today comes from Christian Salis. He's closing the Q&A session, the question is for you, Daniel. Revamping a brand is always a balancing act. How do you make sure to create more excitement among new, younger customer groups without losing traction among existing and maybe slightly older customer groups?
In the presentation, thank you also for that question. It's a very important question, and it's a question that is really we have to focus also in the future what we do with the brand. Clearly, in the presentation we said, we talked about the Gen Z that is going to be the biggest group in the year coming that we have to target. Also the millennials is an important group and will be an important group for us. The first thing you need to do is to be able to talk to those groups, that they understand what your message is. It's about storytelling by brand. The story for HUGO and for BOSS cannot be the same. These end consumers or these fans, as we also call them, they need to understand. They want to have full transparency.
They want to have full clearness on what we stand for as a brand. Therefore, we have to talk to that tribe in a different way if we want to have them as fans or as customers. I think that's something we can do much better than we have in the past. Next to that, of course, we're going to create distinctive marketing strategies for HUGO and for BOSS that really will clearly be aimed to those end consumers. Also, as we said, the product will be much younger. Also, really what we have in the stores, and again, we had the season behind us, and the season was very successful. It's a record season that we already have, this one. It says, and it confirms that we already with that changeHave the right product for the right target group.
I'm sure we will see when it is in the stores, how it will hit and how it will be received by these end consumers. That's not the only thing. We invest, again, into the brand, we invest into the product, we invest into the stores, we invest on any touch points we have for these target consumers.
Thank you, Daniel. There were just coming two very last questions. One is for clarification, which I guess is also important. Let's start with the first one out of these two very last questions. The first one is for you, Daniel. Sorry, Oliver, it's for you actually. Can you please share more about how you will manage the store network globally? For example, in terms of product layout, product mix, in how many stores will you bring women's back in? How will you manage a consistent consumer message across the stores, and how much autonomy are given to local teams?
We have a great retail footprint on the globe. What we are doing now, for sure, first of all, and you heard it, we are reinvesting in our existing store portfolio. First of all, making sure that we stay relevant, that we're clearly defining an exciting and engaging and emotional customer journey. We have a clear defined digital journey also into our stores. How do we get the digital world into our physical stores? That's extremely important also to stay relevant for our existing, but also for younger, also new end consumer joining our stores very shortly. On the other side, we will clearly also make global buy initiatives. What we have already put in place is that we have clear red threads, what we expect, what you will find on the globe.
Doesn't matter if it's from New York City, to Düsseldorf or to Shanghai. A clear statement what stands the brand for. We have local adjustments for sure, without a question. What do we need for the Americas? What do we need for France and Italy, and what do we need for China, for Japan? That's our way moving forward.
Thank you, Oliver. This question, by the way, was asked by Louise Singlehurst from Goldman Sachs. The last question of today, I think this is for you, Yves, again. I guess the clarification is needed because the question was why is the channel mix margin dilutive? The clarification that is asked from Kathryn Parker is as follows. "Please could you confirm whether the full price online.com business is margin dilutive?
No, I cannot confirm this. Clearly what we can see in our retail environment, overall, the online channel is, in terms of EBIT profitability, the most profitable channel, actually, in the variable cost business. I think it's good to understand why, because in the hugoboss.com, the average basket is around EUR 180. This is very high. In the full price business, we have a retail margin. In our business, because 90% of our business is man, we have with 30%, the return rates are fairly low. The online business is the B2C business, is very profitable and it's not margin dilutive. On contrary, it's margin accretive. I think it's very important to understand it right here.
Great. Perfect. Well, Daniel, do you want to conclude or should I?
I just want to say thank you to all of you who are listening in to that new CLAIM 5 strategy. We, as a team, we are completely stand behind this strategy. We're going to also present tomorrow to all our employees, and everybody will be a part of executing this strategy. We are very confident. We are a team. We work together. We feel strong, we feel geared up, and we are all convinced that we will be able to execute to what we today presented to you. With that, thank you very much to all of you, and I hand over back to you.
Yeah. Great. Thanks, Daniel. Thank you, everybody. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for dialing in. This concludes the Q&A session for today. If there's any questions left, please do not hesitate to reach out to any member of the investor relations team. Daniel, Yves, and myself, we will be on the road starting on Friday until the end of next week. We very much look forward to meeting also many of you investors over the next coming days. If there's any questions, please let us know. Thank you very much.