Good morning, buongiorno, to all of you who have made the journey here to Trivero and Oasi Zegna. It is a pleasure to welcome you all and also to see so many familiar faces after so long, and in this very special place. Also welcome to everyone who is joining via our audio webcast, especially those from the U.S., given how early it is there. We have a full day ahead of us. I hope you will enjoy the day, surrounded by this beautiful scenery and landscape. We're going to hear today from our Group CEO and the entire management team on many topics, and specifically on the financial and sustainability ambitions for the long term. Throughout the day, we will be referring to the presentation posted on our website.
The participants in the room should be able to access the events live using their app, and you can follow that along. Everyone can find the relevant materials with the related press release on the investor page of the Zegna Group website. I'm very pleased. Today I will be joined by the entire management team of the group. Of course, the CEO of Zegna and Chairman, Gildo Zegna, CEO and CFO, Gianluca Tagliabue, our Director of Marketing, Digital, and Sustainability, Edoardo Zegna, the CEO of Thom Browne, Rodrigo Bazán, and Angelo Zegna, the Head of Consumer and Retail Excellence. There will be time for Q&A at the end of the presentation. For those connected via webcast, you can both submit your questions through the webcast, or you can send them to my email address.
Before we begin, I need to point out that we may make certain forward-looking statements during today's call. Our actual results may be materially different from those expressed or implied by these forward-looking statements. All such statements are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including those discussed in our SEC filings. I refer you to the safe harbor statement, which is included on page two of today's presentation, and of course, this call will be governed by that language. Again, thank you for joining us today, and with that, I will turn the stage over to Gildo.
Well, friends, I would say, and colleagues, it's exciting to see the Italian flag in this fantastic day. I must say, we couldn't have asked the Creator a better day. We literally prayed because it makes a difference in such a fantastic place between rain, fog, and sun. Today, I couldn't have asked anything better. Welcome to Oasi Zegna, and this is really the home of our values. I hope you enjoy the natural stretch in our territory, more with the cars. It was funny enough this morning when we were stopped, the convoy was stopped by a transumanza, by a flock of sheep of cows going, you know, in the summer route.
That tells you how real this territory is and how much we appreciate the silence and the roots that have made a family an integral part of the territory. We go back 112 years when Ermenegildo Zegna, the founder, our grandfather, established a small wool mill that has become the epitome of excellence, of what the made in Italy textile can do. From there, we turned into luxury menswear to create a brand, Zegna, clear, direct, and to the point. In addition of an authentic American iconic brand, Thom Browne. I think that this journey that seems so long, but at the same time is short, took us to Wall Street, and that was the excitement on the balcony. However, the dream of my grandpa started in this place 90 years ago with a truly authentic, sustainable, sustainability concept.
He planted more than 500,000 trees that you see. I mean, how many of those have grown? It's unbelievable to see rhododendron that are as tall as pines. I remember when I was a kid, they were 1 m high, and they still grow, and they still give their best in their maturity stage. That's why this place is infinite. It will never die. After that, he built a 232 strada statale, which in the family we call Panoramica Zegna. Before we gave the name to this territory as Oasi Zegna, we called the area Panoramica Zegna. Panoramica because you literally can see from two sides of the Alps. On one side, you have Monte Rosa, which you appreciated, and the other, on the other side, you've got Monviso on the Pianura Padana.
It's really the two sides of the beautiful Northern Italy. I think that with these two trees and a special road he has created excellence by giving back to the territory before thinking of creating excellent business results before he gave the business to next generation. As a matter of fact, I can anticipate you give you a little scoop since it's nothing to do with Wall Street. We have decided with Alessandro Sartori to have the menswear Zegna Summer 2023 fashion show at Oasi Zegna. It's really an honor for us in a matter of a month to have the Investor Day followed by the fashion show.
As a matter of fact, the fashion show will close the Milan Fashion Week. I think that it's going to be really a prominent fact. Today we have the third and fourth generation. I just want to remember yesterday I introduced Paolo that is a board member. Anna is with us today as board member, but more than that, she's the president of Fondazione Zegna and very much involved with the territory. A good part of what you see here is thanks to her hard work and the improvement that she did to the territory. We have Franco Ferraris, the head of the textile division, that will take us through the textile, and we thank him to have kept Lanificio so fertile and so up.
We have more management, Fulvio Benetti, head of sustainability, and I hope to have not forgotten anybody else. Third, fourth generation united and a good management team, we can anticipate our goal, which is the highlight of this day, achieve EUR 2 billion revenue in five years organically. That's very important word, because we have a Q&A session, which is the part we enjoy the most. I'm sure that they're going to have some question around that, but I just want to stress the fact that this, we're talking about organically. Because we have plenty of things to do with what we have on the plate. I think it's going to be fun to show you year after year what we can have with this, and I'm talking about the Zegna brand and of course, the Thom Browne.
However, I talked before in the break we had at Margosio this morning. I said, "Listen, we want to grow with scarcity and gradually. We won't push too much, because I think that luxury is something very special, very scarce, and we want to get that feeling." It's good to go fast, but we don't want to overdo it, and I think this is very important. However, the growth, the healthy financial growth, is important in order to keep investing in the many area that we need to invest. I think that there are six points that I would wish you to take away from this intense day. The number one is the importance of the made-in-Italy manufacturing. This is a must.
I think made in Italy is one of the strongest brand in the earth, and Zegna is part of that. How many company, how many Italian company in our field are 112 years old? Not many. The second is the prominence of a controlled supply chain. We are very proud to be an industry, to be an Italian industry, to be an industry of fashion. You will keep hearing excellence is possible only with a healthy industry in which you believe, in which you invest. What we call Filiera. Filiera, it's a beautiful Italian name that means a yarn that goes across different phases. I think that the controlled supply chain is an incredible tool to provide the best service and the best excellence to our customer. The third point is DNA. We are what we are.
I think we are good people. We are honest people. We are very proud of our DNA, which is made of values, substance, and actions. We want to stick to that. Whatever you expect from us, it will be in that direction. We are not giving our DNA away for anything. The fourth thing is that we are very strong believer in the highest level of ESG goal. We have a responsible engineer that is responsible of this project. We are going to put a person in charge of diversity and inclusiveness officer in a few months' time. We do believe that, as I spelled out in my press release, there are a lot of action that have taken place and will take place in due time.
Everything starts from the values of the territory and respecting the people that work for you and the environment you live in. This is of the utmost importance. Also, sustainability is creating products, sustainable products that live forever. I love when my children go after the garment of my grandfather, and they say, "This is so modern. This is so great. This fabric is indestructible." These are the values that make an ESG brand go forever. The fifth is that we are executing our strategy of Zegna and Thom Browne to the highest level. Expect us really for stronger and stronger results. The last point is that, yes, we do believe in productivity and among you often, we only talk about retail productivity, which is fine. Let's talk about industry productivity. If you have to a.
If you have an industry working at full capacity and at full scale, you have to make that productive. You have to make it fast. You have to be technological. You have to make it livable. Let's do not forget that we have two productivity, the industry productivity and the retail productivity, and this is something to focus on because unless we do not aim to a super productivity, we will not get the margin the way we want to get, and we will not generate enough resources in order to get to EUR 2 billion. These are really must-have points.
I think that we have the high potential in front of us, and we'd like to be remembered as a leading modern and integrated group in the luxury goods industry. Why I emphasize the luxury goods industry? Because I do believe in the past three years, not only because of pandemic, the luxury industry has changed a lot. It's funny to see the teddy bear of Tom. I mean, it was so iconic and so cute, but this is how the industry changing, and the industry sometimes is too serious. We have to make the industry sometimes more fun, and I think Tom is making, through his art and through his creative skill, the industry luxury more fun, surely in America first.
Now, what we have done in order to get into a luxury position is that we have dramatically changed our perception. I don't speak about DNA. I'm talking about perception of the brand. As you know, Zegna had a tailoring perception of high quality, and I think that it was a time to move ahead and to move the perception to luxury leisure wear. This has been a really must-have, and we see it is there even before the new brand is in the store, as you know. The only thing is that we have moved our way, the Zegna way, to omnichannel. You know, I think the three most striking word in the actual industry are sustainability, marketing, and e-commerce.
If you ask each of us, each different brand, we interpret that different, okay? Our approach to sustainability, I told you about Edoardo. I don't want to take away the presentation of Edoardo. He will talk about, but has a lot to do with environment. Our approach to marketing has to be very much linked to the digital world and to a strong storytelling purpose. Our approach to e-commerce is very much aligned to omnichannel because when you talk about e-commerce, you cannot forget the business you do with retailers, the business you do with wholesaler, and more than anything, the business you do with clienteling, with outreaching, capacity of the sales associates in the store around the world to outreach the customer. Is that not an online business? For us it is.
When we talk about the numbers, we'd like to put this in perspective because this is our forte, and Angelo will tell you more about this outreach that really the pandemic has woken up, rang the bell. Dun, dun. Wake up, Zegna, starting from America, and we did a super job. I don't want to take away anything from his pitch, but surely. Last but not least, you like it, upward pricing strategy. A brand that can increase the price means it's strong. It means that it's sought. It means that it has scarcity. It means that you can't produce enough for the demand. We like to get there. Are we there? Not yet. We are getting there. Two price hikes for Zegna brand this year. Never happened. We always increase seasonal price increase. Now, we increase prices before the season and during the season.
Will we increase prices more during the year? Why not? We'll see. This is the new mentality, the new credo of the brand. The good thing is to know we are number one men's luxury brand. I don't care who disputes that. There are no precise number, okay? But I can tell you that at top American department store, Zegna is number one. We want to remain number one, and we can consolidate our position to remaining number one regardless of the business model. Go e-tailer, go concession, go wholesale, go pop-in, go trunk show, go made to measure, we don't care. We are flexible in order to make it happen, and we want to remain in that leadership. Do we have a similar position otherwise? Yes and no. Do we want to get there? Yes.
These are some of the clear dynamics that we want to increase in order to become even stronger. Now, let me talk a little bit about Thom Browne. Thom Browne is an incredible reality and Rodrigo will tell you about. I think that the potential of doubling clients, you know, in the mid-term, and if you double clients, you double sales, of course, it could be a reality. Rodrigo will take you through on some of the journey that is entertaining. We have really a good desire to do that. Another important point which you show interest is the geographical mix.
We know that we have been prone more to China than anywhere else, but we also are rebalancing our geographical mix quite quickly. It's extraordinary that we have shown double increase in sales in the United States of America. Unbelievable. We are very proud. Incidentally, America is where I started my journey with the merchant, the purchasing, the pressman, those guys, and I learned a lot from those guys, and I'm glad I was chatting yesterday. I'm glad that the merchant, I'm looking at Ale, that has been through the journey. I like that those merchant are back. The new generation of the merchant are back, and that's the important thing. I think that that's a good reality of knowing that U.S. is back strong, and we have the phenomenon with the Middle East is unbelievable.
Middle East, Hong Kong will be replaced by Dubai. 30 different nationalities shop at Zegna Dubai Mall every day, without counting the Chinese. With no Chinese. Can we say that in the old days in New York or Hong Kong? I never seen a phenomenon like this in my life. We are talking about men's. We are only men's. We are not women. Go and check somebody that's accessories strong in women and men's and maybe like 50. It's unbelievable. It's the new center of the world. Luxury is Dubai, period. If you're not there, you're not. Next will be Saudi. Saudi will is competing with Dubai. Can you imagine if that happen? Double.
I think that what I'm trying to make is that those two reality, States and Middle East, if we talk three years ago, I would have not mentioned them. We changed, and if you didn't change, you missed the boat, and that's the new reality. Now, let me quickly, before I finish, talk about the Made in Italy Luxury Textile Platform and about our made to measure project. Those two are literally my highlights. On the Made in Italy Luxury Textile Platform, I will talk in a moment, but it's something very special, and I think it was worth a presentation for focus. Made to measure is part of that, but it's our Formula One.
I can tell you that my dad, Angelo Zegna, invented made to measure in the 1970s during a trip in Japan in which he said that the real estate in Japan is so minute that a Japanese clothing manufacturer have to use the single made to order production if they want to show more item in the store. What they did in 30 sq m, they had one garment per swatch in different fabrics.
If the top guy or the small guy went, "Yeah, I can do it in a week," he said, "Gosh, why can't I make it in my place?" He created the made to measure of Zegna, and this has been an incredible tool of growth because if you think, Angelo will tell you, in some store, we produce 30% of the turnover is made to measure. It's unbelievable. If we didn't offer, we would be less 30% as productive. In the store that are not there yet, there is a long opportunity to get there. I think that these really are two incredible opportunities when we talk about organic growth. Back to some numbers. I gave you only one number, EUR 2 billion revenue in five years. Pretty ambitious. I have to.
I'd like to give you another one. Adjusted EBIT margin of at least 15%. We'd like to reach this in a shorter timeframe than the EUR 2 billion. I cannot give you the exact year, but let's put it this way, you know. One is more mid-term than the other, let's put it this way. We have a goal to really expand clients and productivity in the store swiftly. Internally, I can tell you, internally, we gave a very big goal, to be honest with you. Well over 50%. Luckily Thom Browne is still smaller in footprint compared to Zegna, and so Thom Browne has an opportunity to expand his network.
Last but not least, I got some little, not scoop, but surprises that Alessandro and Edoardo will prove in the next few weeks or months. Collab. We have a couple of collab that we have been cooking for a while, and they should be unveiled in a matter of weeks. That surely will help. Also, don't forget that there is no growth, there is no organic growth to the run rate of EUR 2 billion unless we invest in talent, diversity of talent. We are going to have a diversity and inclusion officer that will help us to become more attractive to diverse talents. Second, marketing. I think we are going to have to do something more, give more resources to Edo on the marketing, so little bit more generous for next year.
I think we should go in that direction. Last but not least, confirm the CapEx of 5% a year in the near term, which is pretty good. I think having the resources to spend 5% CapEx on a turnover today, you have to be lucky to have the resources, and two, to have the vision to spend it, and three, to have the guts to spend it. Because in days like this and with this geopolitical mess, you say, "But is it not better to hoard?" No, we just go. I think it's pretty. I would say I don't like the word aggressive. I think aggressive means negative. Ambitious, realistic, and I think with the management team and with the strategy that we have in due course, I think we can get there.
As usual, I've been too long, but I think it has been a nice conversation with you guys, and looking forward to some question. Before I leave the word to Edoardo, I'd like to anticipate that we thought about a special gift for you, and of course it has to come from Oasi Zegna, from our territory. Anna has created this beautiful wooden heart made of recycled wood from spontaneously fallen trees in Oasi. Recycling. Hundreds of years after hundreds of years. Reuse, zero waste. That's what the nature is teaching, and it's our belief. More important, we are going to plant one real tree for each of you in the heart of Zegna Forest. Forever. Thank you.
For more than a century, our family has been taking care of the mountain and its woods. At the beginning of 1900, our founder, Ermenegildo Zegna, transformed the barren mountain near his mill, planting more than 500,000 trees. Protecting such a beautiful and fragile habitat is today our responsibility. In recent decades, our territory has experienced many transformations that reflect the state of health of our planet. Forest management is essential to prevent possible environmental calamities. In Oasi Zegna, there is still a lot of work to be done, and this is the reason why we launched the Zegna Forest Project.
Hi. Hi to all. If I haven't met you yet, my name is Edoardo. I run marketing and digital for the brand Zegna, and I run sustainability for the group. Sustainability and community is something that has been part of our family for generations. In this, in the past, our efforts have been driven both by our family foundation, as much from the company. The effort, despite being extremely honorable, have been a bit scattered and never with one single goal. Our company, as you are all aware, is a public company. This provide for us an amazing opportunity to actually consolidate our story, find a single strategy, and shout it in a big way.
I wanna start from here, and this is an idea. If my great-grandfather had to write a sustainability report in the 1930s, he would have listed most likely three dreams, give life to a mountain, build a community, and give back and connect to the world. Well, today it is a reality. He planted more than 500,000 trees. Developed our hometown. He built a hospital, he built an orphanage, a swimming pool. He built a community. He built a 26 km road that you guys have driven surrounding this area. I guess what I'm trying to say here is that we're a family based on substance and actions, not words. I don't wanna compare ourselves with other brands, but these are facts. They're not words.
Today we begin a new journey that hopefully will bring us for another 100+ years. How? By simply stating who we are and what sets us apart. There is no buzzword. It's simply who we are. How do we get there? We launched this about six months ago. As Gildo was saying, Fulvio Benetti is the new director of sustainability for the group, so we have one single person responsible for it. We launched a study asking some of you what were the most important pressing things that you cared about. We read them, we studied them, and we integrated with our strategy. The three things that emerged the most out of this questionnaire and questions and so forth are three.
The first one is human and labor rights. Luckily, we own most of our supply chain, and so we can control it, but we also have extremely long-term relationship with a lot of our partners, and so this is something that clearly is something very important to us, and we'll showcase. The second thing that emerged is water management. I'm proud to say that we are standing, and you'll visit this afternoon, Lanificio Zegna, and we reduced water consumption in Lanificio Zegna, recirculating up to 30% of it. So again, a testament of the forward thinking and how we think about this. The third point is sustainable sourcing. I'll talk more about it, but it is very much the heart of the way we think about it.
Today, based on this study and what we learned, these are the three commitments that we wanna put for the years to come. The first commitment is made in Italy transparently. This is not about making everything in Italy. It's about making majority of what we do in Italy, but with a true sense of transparency and traceability attached to it. The second commitment is about community. It's about what my great-grandfather left us, and my grandfather, and my parents, and so forth have left to us. Weaving, we like the word weaving because it transcends between what we do and what actually a community is. It's weaving the fabric of tomorrow through to our founder's vision. Lastly, the third commitment is Oasi. How could it not be Oasi?
The home of our values and what it stands for. The first commitment is transparency and made in Italy. As I said, this is how we do things. Actually, he's gonna speak after me around the Made in Italy luxury platform and about this amazing conglomerate of entities. We actually own the largest textile manufacturing platform in Italy on a luxury level. This is a huge advantage. It's an advantage compared to anybody else. We don't rely on third people. We rely on ourself, and we are able to be traceable, and we're able to decide what we wanna do across this entire supply chain. The other thing that is unique to us is the idea that we own a farm in Australia.
The wool travels and comes here, where you're gonna visit in a second, then it goes to storage. In this journey, there are discarded fibers, threads that, thanks to Alessandro and his vision, we reassemble and create into what we like to call #UseTheExisting. We give a second life to discarded fabrics and so forth. Clearly, when you think about circularity and everything, clearly there is a next stage that is, I mean, how do we recuperate some of the unsold products or even old products and give them a second life? Again, these are all commitments that we have started, that we wanna continue, and we wanna start, and this is a journey towards Made in Italy and in a super transparent way.
These are some of the action points, and in your presentation that you will have separate to this one, you'll have that every one of these commitments has an explanation of specific points with very specific targets attached to it. Some of them are here presented on the slide. Clearly, the first one I talked about. The second one is partially talked about. Again, responsible sourcing is something that is huge. The last one, again, is around governance and sourcing policies as a whole. The second commitment is about weaving the fabric of tomorrow. I like the idea of the fact that since 1910, we fertilize the Italian community and craft.
We give back to who has given us the most, our country, Italy, and we export to Italy, to the world, the best out of Italy as a whole. There are three things that I'm particularly proud of that I think can give you the high and low of how, as a family, and now as a company, as a public company, we are transmitting some of these community actions that my grandfather has given to us down. The first one is Accademia dei Mestieri. Again, how can we keep fertilizing this craft? Make sure that there are passionate people in factories that are interested in evolving the manufacturing to re-looking at textile and so forth. We're working on creating a real school, and what an amazing school.
A school that is across an entire Italian made in Italy platform that is more than one entity. The second thing is the work that the family has done in the prison in Biella. It's about a prison where we donated tools and facilities for all the prisoners to be able to recreate clothing and to learn the craft, and to be able to then sell these and give this a second life for themselves as a whole.
Third, and I go on a third level, that is, the scholarship named after my great-grandfather, Ermenegildo Zegna, that was founded years ago, where the family decided to donate EUR 1 million a year to foster young talent to study abroad, to have an experience abroad, and then bring back to Italy their knowledge and so forth. This is our continuation of our founder's dream, give back to institutions, to the suppliers, and to the employees. These are some of the highlights. Clearly, the first one is about collaborating with university, NGOs, and institutions to think broader about what we do and learn from it and make this a place where people can study, can improve. Second is responsible farming.
Farming is a major opportunity because you need to move sheep around. You can't let them all in one place. They will destroy a location. I mean, I don't wanna talk farming right now, but that's the proof. You need to make sure that the sheep move, that the environment is able to recreate itself, and so forth. Thirdly, as my father was mentioning, diversity and equity inclusion is a very important thing. Something that, by the way, Thom Browne is very ahead of and we can learn a lot from. The third goal had to be Oasi Zegna. Again, exporting the legacy of Oasi Zegna by spearheading manmade forest in the world. I think this is a glorious dream. This is a manmade forest. Who else in the world has created manmade forest?
How can we amplify that? How can we be proud and showcase this around the world as a whole? One very important thing that my father just approved was the idea that in order to push this mindset of Oasi Zegna across the globe from 2023 the Zegna Group will plant 10,000 trees in the Zegna Forest where also your trees will be Zegna Forest in every city where Zegna Group opens or allocates a Zegna boutique. Again, it's a testament to how can we keep fostering this, and I'll talk a lot in my marketing presentation on the opportunity that all of this has as a whole. As I said, the presentation you'll have all of these three commitments and explored in a major way. Transparency and traceability, community, and Oasi.
This road is our road. It's a very simple road, but it's who we are, and it's what sets us apart. We look forward to have you in this journey, and I repeat how I started. Actions speak louder than words, and the time has proven. Thank you.
Yeah. Yeah, we are just midway.
Yeah.
Take that.
Back to the supply chain. I don't want to bore you because I think that certain things have been repeated several times, but repetita iuvant, and the supply chain is one that has to really be part of the strategy. Because, I mean, this is the place where it all started, and this is the place that gave birth, I mean, to the integrated supply chain. And that's the way we want to do business for the years to come. There's just an anecdote from the history of my grandpa. The reason why Ermenegildo Zegna founder decided to go this high-end textile, you know why? Besides his ambition and his vision, thanks to the British. Because the British were the competitors of the luxury textile industry.
He said, "I want to be the best, and I want to compete with the British. Not only create the best fabric, but also a fabric with a special design." He was a designer. He knew how to create a pattern. He knew how to design a fabric. He knew how to put the different raw material together in order to get the right hand and the right finish. It's competition. It's this, positive energy that competition creates and that makes you improve day after day. Contrary to the British, he put a brand.
With the fabric. The British did not have a brand. Okay, there were areas, you know, here and there, and almost all then closed, unfortunately. The fabrics were sold to trader, cloth trader, we used to call it, grossisti. They reached you with the name of the trader. It was not the actual name of the producer, or very few. Instead, he said, "I want my brand to be known by the tailor who's going to transfer the branding to the final customer." That's how he got into the marketing. Marvelous. Not only a genius in terms of philanthropy, in terms of entrepreneurship, but in terms of marketing. There was no digital marketing, but on railroads, every station there was a Ermenegildo Zegna Tessuti, the best in the world, bam.
Every time the train stopped, you read and you say, "Okay, let me just go and try a Zegna suit made with Zegna fabric." Anyhow, that is a funny thing. The other funny thing to tell you how our supply chain has been incredible, founded in the mills in Italy, is when my dad in the 1970s went to Gianni Versace, and he said, "Mr. Versace, why don't you have your menswear produced by us?" 1970s. Unbelievable. He said, "Why not?" We made a deal with the Versace family, with whom we went for many years, for producing Versace men's. Lastly, Maurizio Gucci. The last Maurizio Gucci, 1991, when I signed a manufacturing and distribution agreement with Gucci, and Mr. Tom Ford was there.
He was a young designer with Dawn Mello, another very strong fashion director of the American Bergdorf Goodman. These are some of the highlights of our history. Last but not least, let me mention the two Tom. Tom Ford, 2016, Domenico came, and Tom came to me and said, "Okay, we want to be back in business with the brand. Can you partner with us in order to do men's?" Of course, the Thom Browne story you know. I think that the history tells you how deep this know-how in an industry as such that is made of textiles and is made of clothing, is made of knitwear, is making of Italian know-how, doing things well. Craftsmanship is at the mast.
We were talking over in the lobby during the break, and one of you asked me a very smart question. Is there a shortage of talent? Of course, there is. How do you cope with that? Good question. Since we cannot count on industrial school as we did in our generation. They're coming back. They're coming 30 years too late. We are going to unveil an academy, Accademia dei Mestieri, within the Zegna Group. It's not only the factory, it's not only the plant. Today, we have in every plant, we have a little academy. I just want to do something big. To think 30 years, not think 10 years.
In order to fill in every void in the supply chain, but not only the supply chain, in every function that is important for the future of our brand and of our strengthening of our brand. I can tell you a little bit more about the Textile Luxury Platform. Now, it counts over 650 people. It's made out of a bunch of super specialists that, through the course of the year, with Franco Ferraris, we integrated within the wisdom of Ermenegildo Zegna. It gives an incredible opportunity for us to gain competitive advantage in different raw materials and also to gain competitive advantage when we go around and meet a top customer. Because I go not with a trolley, I go with a.
Not with a leash, I go with a trunk. I open the trunk, I show to the leading brand five different collections with five different specialists. It gives us the opportunity to build scale, and that's very important. The other part is that our manufacturing clothing part of the supply chain practically produces 70%-75% is made in Italy, including Ticino. You know that we have a factory in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland, where most of the workers are Italian, and so for us is kind of made in Italy. I think that this 70%-75% is quite important that of our total manufacturing.
I would say that the internal production for tailoring is close to 100%. All the tailoring suits and clothing is almost 100% done inside. But if you include all product, about 40% of the total product are internally produced. Our intention is that this percentage goes up. Now, the advantage of this model is that it gives you flexibility and speed that are very, very important in order to cope with the different opportunities that you have around the world and of switching, you know, from market to market or from latitude to latitude. I think that having a vertical integration I think gives you surely a few advantages.
I think the first one is the advantage of traceability, which we call our project Autentico, which basically what it means that all the wool that we buy, as raw material, is traceable through this Autentico project that goes from Wool Growers to Wool Mill. It's like going from the farm gate to the wool tops of the mill. This is very important because every step of the journey is traced. #UseTheExisting, you will see in the factory, is practically being able to utilize the waste of the textile and recreate the fabrics that become authentic, and it's really a 100% recycled fabrics.
The other, I would say particular, advantage of having a vertical supply chain is that through the made-to-measure chain, we are able to offer an incredible service by which we can deliver the garment in two weeks. Not around the world, but we have in the top market, we are able to do that two weeks delivery. As we anticipate the MTM in the store, we are transforming the made-to-measure supply chain into a more digital form by which we create a kind of a mini avatar in which you can look, you know, yourself in putting different style and garment together and make your buy or purchase easier. Another important part of having this fully integrated chain is a project we call Essentials. Why Essentials?
Because without that, you miss something as a retailer or as a brand. What is Essentials? Essentials is in Thom Browne, it's called Classic. I'm sure that Rodrigo will tell you about. Practically is a collection of a few hundreds of SKU which is available all year round, and it will never go out of stock. These are the pieces that you need most or you wear the most. This is an incredible advantage because you don't miss sale, you don't look stupid to the customer. Have you ever tried, "You have a 50 two-button blazer?" "No out of size." "What? Out of size in a navy blazer?" "Yes." This is what happen most of the time in retailing.
To avoid this, figuraccia, we have invested in succession, and I think this is going to boost the productivity quite a lot. This is going to be offered for fall/winter in our own stores and through the wholesale chain. I do believe that these are some of the pluses that we can highlight in telling you what our supply chain is like. Today, you will see the first part of the supply chain, only the textile part. We don't have time to show you the second half, which is the clothing part, which we wish to show you either in Italy or in Switzerland in due course to show you what the formulation in clothing looks like.
I can tell you that by running under capacity in our Made in Italy platform, we are going to hire close to 100 people this year, of which 25 Ukrainian, and we are very proud of that. We have been promoting this project with the pressure of Camera della Moda and with other prominent brands that we want to make the life of these, I don't like them to call it refugees, to these brothers and sister easier and to able to create a new life. We are offering them a job, and we already have five of them already working with us. So these are some of the highlights I wanted to share with you, and I think that that's it for my part. Now I think it's Rodrigo. No, it's Edoardo again.
Oh, boy, it's a back and forth. It's like a derby here. Thank you. Like a derby between generation. You will vote the generation. I think it's fair. Huh? A vote between generation. I can tell you that during the investor video, I lost it big time. Our generation lost against them, so we have to come back.
I'm back without the chair. I go back to Oasi Zegna brand. Nobody, as you hopefully have witnessed, and you will again discover today, has done what you have seen. My great-grandfather, as we said, planted 500,000 trees, built a road, built a community, and made what today is Oasi Zegna. Throughout our history, we have proven to have been unable to tell this story in a proper way. It's probably our own nature. As we said before, we are a family of substance and few words. The Italians will know this, but Piemontese are frugal, are hardworking, and if there is one thing that has passed on through generation, is the fact that we don't do things for fame. We do them because they're right.
Now we're, like, in this amazing intersection of time and opportunity. Now it's the time to make this blossom, to tell this secret, to shout it, to highlight what this place is. I mean, it's like 12. You're probably by now like, "How have they not told this story before? I mean, what's wrong with these guys?" I mean, I beg the question, are we the best-kept secret in luxury? My mission is only one, how can I make Zegna recognizable? A lot will have to do, thanks to the help of Oasi Zegna. Before we go there, I wanna remind you. Before we go on how we wanna make Zegna recognizable, I wanna remind you of the journey we've done so to date. Six months ago, we IPO'd in New York.
We launched this concept of a mono brand. All of our advertisement, a lot of our facades changed the new logo. There is one, it's Zegna. We reposition ourself and condensed the three labels into one. We reposition ourself as a more luxurious, higher price point and way higher on the top of the pie. We did almost something unthinkable, like thinking two years back. We transitioned from a tailoring brand into a luxury leisure brand. Newsflash, no product in store was conceived as a mono brand. What you guys witnessed yesterday in the store is still three collections. Three collections that were conceived at the beginning of 2021. That's crazy, right? We've done all of this by just changing the label and moving merchandise around and making it.
Again, I go back to the stupid question of like, are we the best-kept secret in luxury and are we still scratching the surface of the potential what we can do? The new collection with the mono brand will land for the first time in June in store. Our brand has gained major momentum. The IPO helped a lot. The mono brand helped a lot. This chart, I think, explains how hard was it for us. You could argue like, "You guys are crazy." For the first time in our history, the highest search thing in the company has been Zegna. It's five letter: Z-E-G-N-A. It's just recently surpassed Ermenegildo Zegna. It tells you again how it's as if we were moving up the hill with like stones in our backpack.
Across the board, you see the momentum on products. Products such as the Triple Stitch. Triple Stitch that actually the entire management is wearing today. You have a full collection here today. Awareness that is growing across the globe, WeChat, Google, as I mentioned, Weibo. The Douyin campaign was insanely powerful at the end of last year on just the outdoor as a whole. Now, how can we get the secret out there? The secret of us, the secret of who we are as a whole. We start with building blocks. The first building block that we wanna build, and we built and started this two years ago, is Triple Stitch. The recognizability and relevance of the brand has to go through the creation of icons that speak of your inner self.
It's like they distill the essence of your brand through a product. If you're able to create these iconic products, you're in heaven because they speak. They are like the best advertising campaign for your brand. The goal here is, as a company, to build some of the building blocks. The first building block that we created was Triple Stitch two years ago. Now bear in mind, two years ago, we were very little in leather. We've never been relevant in shoes, ever. We did this well through supply chain, through marketing, through seeding, through in store, and so forth, and we created a product that I wanna highlight, despite being a sneaker, still speaks of our core self. The three X's that you see here are not random three X's. The three X's come from our core.
On the lapel, where you put, in the old days, you put the flower, you have a buttonhole with three X's that were closed. This is where this comes from. Every product, again, is traced back to where we come from as a whole and that's very important for us. The Triple Stitch, we obviously cannot give you the numbers, but I like to start from the title on the top left, that is Road to EUR 100 million. Every building block that we create and we plan ahead of time needs to be of at least EUR 100 million. How far are we on the journey? We're pretty close. You can see the growth year-over-year on revenue and underneath the marketing spend attached to all of this.
This is a smart marketing spend, and what is the secret sauce here? If you guys visited today or I'm sure you are on many conferences, whether it's Davos or whatever it is, I can assure you that at least one of the speakers is wearing Triple Stitch. Why? Because we placed it in the right place, in the right spots, in the right people, and this is word of mouth. It's how you build an Icon in authentic way. The best news of this is when you do things well, the success comes on also a new dimension that is across new customers. The Triple Stitch penetration new customer is 42% higher than average, not surprisingly. Yes, distill the essence of your brand into a block.
Plan two years in advance and build a house of Zegna into a recognizable house, something we've never really had. Triple Stitch is the first, and I'll tell you more about the next one to come. Clearly, the beauty of creating recognizability within your Icons is that the stronger the Icon is, the more power you have to do whatever you want with pricing because if it's requested and it's asked for, I mean, you can do whatever you want. Clearly, the strategy that my father was speaking about is here to see on the slide. This is the strategic slide of Zegna brand today. These are the building blocks. First building block built two years ago, Triple Stitch. Second building block, Oasi Cashmere. It's not cashmere, it's Oasi Cashmere.
Third building block will be made to measure, and I'll talk to you more in a second. The goal is every year we wanna add a building block to this house. The goal here is that every single building block needs to be of at least EUR 100 million, and you can see the chart underneath of where we are on the journey. Oasi Cashmere we're launching store in September of this year. Two major layers that are important to highlight this, that make this building block successful. One is essential. It's what my father was talking about. It's about being able to have the power to replenish all of this instantaneously and having both some of the natural fibers ahead of time and so forth. The other one is collaboration.
For us, the collaboration is not about just, oh yeah, let's go and get new customers with a new product. No. Collaboration for us is instead to use collaboration to maximize our core in an authentic way to get new customer. That is, how can I get Triple Stitch, how can I get Oasi Cashmere, get a collaborator that amplifies even further what these building blocks as a whole? Let's go by order. Oasi Cashmere. I've spoken about during my sustainability presentation about the power of traceability. I'm very proud to say that Oasi for Zegna brand is becoming a trademark of our commitment to traceability. Today is Oasi Cashmere. Tomorrow it will be Oasi attached to another natural fiber.
We have 30 years to go on this strategy, and this strategy is consistent and keeps going to amplify where we're at, the place that, again, for some reason we have never been able to communicate as a whole. Now, the interesting thing about Oasi Cashmere on the traceability side is that, for this year, the product will be landing in September in store, some of our cashmere will be 100% traceable across the entire value chain. There is a commitment to making sure that all of Oasi Cashmere will be sooner or later 100% traceable. It's about placing a QR code inside the clothing.
It's about having the user travel to Mongolia, where some of our cashmere is collected, then go back to Italy to Biagioli, the factory that we bought a couple of years ago, and then back to Italy, to Oasi Zegna, where coincidentally we shot the campaign. Again, this success doesn't just come from one second to another. It was advanced planning. It was advanced planning and supply chain on marketing, so forth. The acquisition, as I said, of Biagioli is not, "Yeah, let's buy a cashmere manufacturer as a whole." No, it's coincidentally because we wanna get there. It's about building a block means advanced planning and creating what this block means and what it needs to become. Essentials. My father talked about this. I mean, by reducing complexity, you accelerate growth.
You're more profitable. You're quicker. You're leaner. Gianluca and the entire supply chain can just see ahead of time and run in direction. This chart is so basic but so powerful on how we're moving into a different place. Again, the advantage of being recognizable. The advantage of being iconic products are recognizable allows you to just be a leaner company as a whole. Collaboration, I talked about this. This year we'll announce at least three collaborations, but I repeat the concept of collaboration. Collaboration is here to maximize our core in an authentic way to new consumers, okay? The new building block. In some capacity, what sets us apart. We believe that we do today already offer unique experiences, but we don't speak about them. We could grow this so much more.
We believe that luxury today is service and personalization of interactions. The goal is to seamlessly, clearly integrate this interaction across all touch points. When I think of digital as a brand Zegna, I see this way broader than just a sales channel. To me, it's an instrument to engage and to attract new customer and to show them what sets us apart. We are fully omnichannel. Actually, let me go back because if not, you just look at the slide. We are fully omnichannel since more than four years. All of our stores are directly connected online and offline. All the sales employees have a tool in their hands where they can scan the barcode, see stock availability, we can transfer product from one place to another.
They can highlight qualitatively and quantitatively the reason why they missed the sales and so forth, okay. Now, what we've been piloting since the beginning of 2021 was a clienteling app. How could we give in the hands of our salesperson the ability to outreach, to do one-to-one? We are very proud to say that, and this is the data of the past 30 days, is that globally today, 29% of revenue comes from outreach. U.S.A., that has been the first pilot and the first one to adopt it, and so forth, is at 37%. 37% of sales into our stores is done by outreach. This is personalization of service one-to-one. But this was not good enough.
We knew this was gonna happen, and we knew that COVID was gonna increase this parallel, and adoption was gonna be easier, and so forth. We ask ourself, let's assume that this app is successful, how can we already plan to give into the hands of salespeople an even more effective tool to do outreaching and so forth? We decided to launch a style configurator, a styling configurator. I'm not gonna spoil it to you, and that's the purpose that I just put some images, because I'd love to see you in store potentially in September and witnesses this live in some of our stores that we're piloting live.
The idea is, how can I provide to the salespeople to outreach in a very powerful way, in a very functional way, and give them a better idea of how they could dress, what they could buy, what they could get on made to measure, and so forth. We're creating exclusively with this technological company and we will soon shortly come out with a press release around this, around the ability to give to salespeople to do marketing bottom-up. We've talked a lot about our power and what sets us apart. We haven't talked enough about the power of our sales staff. I think we hold so much talent and so much know-how, we need to empower them to do this service and to do this personalization service in the most powerful way.
This will be one of the biggest game changer we think in the company. That is not just about made to measure. It's about the entire collection being displayed through this tool and being able to mix and match to see different options and to play live around all the different projects as a whole. The third building block of the company is made to measure. Today, made to measure is mainly tailoring. Look at our transition on the ready-to-wear side. We have to go in that direction, and this tool will provide an amazing opportunity to do this. One of the biggest success of this app has been Angelo Zegna that has led, and he's about to speak right now, has led American retail for the past 18 months.
U.S. has taken this pilot and has scaled it globally, same as Angelo. Angelo is head of retail, and he's becoming globally the head of retail excellence for the company. I think that one of Angelo's major goals is to. Let's assume that on marketing, we're able to tell this amazing story. How can we distill this story into experiences in store? How can we start creating a Zegna gift? How can we could start creating a Zegna in-store experience? How can we be able to create an experience that is softer than just the entire campaign as a whole? In conclusion on the Zegna brand, the road is traced for how I see it.
We have highlighted what sets us apart, icons that become the recognizability for the brand, building blocks for the company. I go back to my first question that is like, are we the best-kept secret in luxury? Time will tell, it's spring, flowers blossoming, and we have all it takes to finally shout who we are and what and the road that will take us there. Thank you very much. Grazie.
Good afternoon, everybody. Now that Edo has told us what it takes to build a recognizable brand, what I'll do today right now with you guys is to tell you what a recognizable Zegna retail experience looks like and what we are doing to increase the spend of our top high net worth individual clients with the sole goal of doubling our retail productivity in our stores versus 2021. You'll hear from Gianluca that as per our guidance, we set ourselves a target of increasing 2021 productivity by 50%, but we're committing today to up the target to 100% in the longer term. To do so, we created a new function, which I'm heading.
This function controls all of the level of retail from CRM to data insight, to customer engagement, to retail training, to VIP and delighting projects, as well as retail operation in order to hit this goal. Over the next 15 minutes, I'll explain to you what we internally call the relationship business model. As a luxury brand, we know that being a luxury is not only about selling clothing, but in fact it's even more about building these relationships. We know that in order to build this relationship, we need to stay in touch with our customers. We need to know what they want, where they travel to, when is their holiday, when is the name of their beloved ones in order to anticipate their needs and trigger their wants and their desires.
We believe that the art of clienteling, which is building these authentic relationships, is the ultimate productivity driver. Why? It empowers each one of our 1,200 customer advisors in stores to transform themselves into a store. 1,200 customer advisors, 1,200 stores. Why is clienteling so important? We found that sales triggered through clienteling are 50% higher than a normal walk-in. Why is that the case? How does it happen? It's really simple. Our customer advisors, once they do clienteling, are better prepared for their upcoming appointment. They're also able to plan ahead, which means that we're not subject to the flows of tourists or random walk-ins, and we can build as a company with a stronger domestic business. Last year, Zegna's domestic business was higher than 80% globally.
Edo briefly talked about how we have been faring so far with clienteling. We talked about our U.S.A. pilot, which went live. We talked about our remarkable 37% in the U.S. performance. We talked of how we're now rolling it out. We have rolled it out globally, and we're setting ourselves an ambitious target in the midterm to hit 50% of our revenues coming from clienteling. It's ambitious, but we'll get there. This is not a COVID story. It's about building authentic relationships with our clients. How have we done it? Of course, technology played a part, and our proprietary app did play a role, but it was all about changing the mindset of the people.
We've now changed, and we place clienteling at the center of our interviewing process by asking candidates clienteling task, and based on an assessment whether they're fit or not to join our organization. We change our compensation structure in order to promote clienteling, and the results are there to see. Now, I talked about a change of mindset, right? What is the best of changing a mindset that's based on building this relationship? The Net Promoter Score, we believe, is the best way of doing so, and the results are showing of all the hard work. In the U.S., in 2021, our NPS was 92% in our boutique. We're talking about over 1,000 respondents. Globally, we've increased by 15% this year of 2021 versus previous year.
Our CEO believes so much in the importance of relationships that he has set NPS as the goal for the whole organization. Every single executive, from Alessandro Sartori to the supply chain head, will be held to this measurement.
Can you explain what NPS is?
Of course. NPS, as many of you may know, is a methodology which was devised by Bain 30 years ago, which measure the satisfaction of a client who's purchased in any of our store. Again, it's a methodology that's used across industries. Apple, and we're lucky enough to have Ron Johnson, who's the head of retail for Apple, on our board, and he attributes to NPS, he believes that NPS was the single most important factor in creating the Apple retail experience. Since when I learned from the best, we went straight to Apple adopting this methodology.
Now, still a long way to go to get to 50%, and we currently are able to have a single customer view, so we know as a company who our customers are across all channels, which is not a given, but we're already there. We're gonna be deploying by the summer a very important tool which will allow us to predict and prescribe what are the behaviors of our customer based on historical data in order, again, to anticipate their needs. Last, Edo talked about the importance of the styling configurator, which will allow all of our customer associates to use this tool to increase our sales. I'll now move and tell you what are we doing to build this relationship with our top clients. We're bringing this to the next level.
five years ago, Gildo created what we call Circle 300 . This is a program, it's a group of the 300 most influential clients at Zegna, which are relationships which the family has built over generations. We spent five years perfecting it because nothing can go wrong. We've now decided to expand this group to 3,000 people, and we started with the U.S.. These are individuals who spend more than EUR 50,000 per year at Zegna. Why are we focusing so much on high net worth individuals? Well, first of all, we know they're more resilient to inflation and to recession. We don't know what's gonna happen, but it's good to know that the backbone of our business is resilient to such, let's say, adverse phenomena.
As you can see from the Capgemini chart, there are in the world 5 million males who could afford to spend more than EUR 50,000 per year at Zegna. No matter how many Zegna has today, we're really only scraping the surface. There's so much room to grow. What does it take for us to get more of them? You see that in the Forbes 400 list, we already have 30%, and given the mix of gender is a good result to be at. We wanna go to. We wanna get more. We ask ourself, "How do we get more?" The answer is very simple. We need to be where they are, and we need to be part of their lives.
This insight of being part of our customer life is shaping everything we do at Zegna. I'll focus on two areas of the business in particular with two examples, one on marketing and one of real estate. February 2022, Los Angeles was a single month in private aviation with the highest number of inbound flights. What did Zegna do? We took over the private jet terminal of Los Angeles Airport in a month where there was a Super Bowl and we had Jerry Lorenzo. Going forward, we're gonna be investing disproportionately in this type of places because that's where high net worth individuals are. The beauty of it is that every single person walking in front of it is a potential EUR 50,000 customers, unlike other type of marketing activities.
We're adopting the same approach as we think of partnerships. Partnerships are needed for us to attract young and potential high net worth individuals. We're partnering globally and locally with some of the top private members club, some of the luxury hotels, again, private aviation, some of the most established family investment firms in order, again, to attract the next wave of high net worth individuals. We talked about marketing briefly, and I'll show you an example that shows how this insight into the customer lifecycle is even shaping our real estate trust strategy, our retail strategy, and I'll bring to you the example of Boston. We used to have a store, it was nice. It was one of a dozen storefront. It was quite impersonal. It was sitting in a mall.
We pulled out the store from the mall, and we placed it on Newbury Street. It's not just on Newbury Street, it's part of the newly developed, most luxurious hotel there is in the city, and it sits right to the entrance of the hottest restaurant in town, which is run by Mario Carbone, which is the most exciting chef there is in the U.S.. We, of course, work with both now, the hotel and the restaurant, but the location was strategic. What are the results? This is six months after opening of one store, so small sample size, but it's still relevant. Well, first of all, we decided to halve the size of our store. You may wonder, well, how is this possible? Why are you guys doing it? Well, we heard about made to measure. Made to measure was born as a productivity driver.
Grandfather had the idea of bringing to Japan because spaces were too small. We're using that insight, which is still very valid, to say that we need smaller stores. In the U.S., on average, 20% of our sales come from made to measure. In the largest store, it's above 30%. You don't need space. All you need is a meter. Similarly, as you half rent, as you half size, you also half rent, which is always good to have. What we were excited to see is that the revenue did not drop, which is what would be, you know, everybody's concern. The revenue almost doubled. Full price revenue in six months in Boston with this new location almost doubled. I wanna highlight the part full price.
It will have been one year that in the U.S. there's not a single Zegna product in our channels online and offline that's sold at discount. As of a year ago, Zegna has stopped doing bargains in the U.S., and the results are there to show. Very important, what has happened, not only we've grown, but we've also grown significantly the share of new clients. This strategy is paying off, and this strategy in this location has tripled the full price productivity with half rents. This is not isolated to Boston. We're applying the same strategy to Vienna. We're applying the same strategy to Madrid and to many other cities around the world, wherever the opportunity presents itself. How does everything. You know, we talk about how will it shape Zegna's future.
This is a conversation that my brother and I had, you know, actually over the past two years, and we were imagining how will consumer trend and behavior change. Before the pandemic, luxury brands were used to customer coming to them. Main KPI, conversion rate. Once they hit into the door, you know, hit them hard and make sure that they convert. The pandemic has accelerated the need of all luxury brands to go to their customer. They don't come any longer with you. How do you engage? Importance of clienteling. We believe, as we said, this is there to stay. However, in the long term, we believe there's gonna be a third lever which will work in parallel with the second one, which is the one that I just described, which is be in your customer life.
How can you turn your brand as an experience? Because as a reminder, it's not only about selling clothing, but it's about giving customer an unexpected experience. Before I, let's say, wrap it up, I just wanted to leave you with this one fact which I find just very interesting. The Economist 2019, size of GDP. The Midwest, for those of you who are not familiar with the U.S., is that cold area north of Chicago. If the Midwest was a country, which it's not, but if it was, it would be larger than Germany and Britain. It would be the fourth largest GDP in the world. Zegna currently has one store in Chicago. We're looking to open a second one. The question for you is, will we always need a store? What does it mean to be part of our client's life?
What would the impact of a Zegna at home service on productivity be? The question, of course, is open, and it's a teaser for all of you to bring home. How does this, everything we talked, Edo and I, this morning tie up? Edo has spoke about how our rebranding, building that momentum will drive traffic. We talked about clienteling as a great way of increasing conversion, spend, and frequency. We did, and Gildo talked about the strategy of the brand to go up and up and up, which means increasing prices, but also increasing the luxury content of the product we sell. As a matter of fact, fall/winter 2019 versus fall/winter 2021, our average unit retail price has increased globally by 27%. Up, up, and up is happening.
We think, again, Edo mentioned the Zegna styling configurator as a game changer. It is. That will be the single biggest opportunity for us to increase unit per transaction. Zegna, unlike many of our competitors who only focus on one or two categories, has a full wardrobe. When Edo talks about styling, that is our sweet spot. We do formal and informal. Nobody else does it. That's why we're the leaders in the menswear space. This configurator will drastically drive average ticket. Last, net selling square meter, we did say that we're gonna be reducing it every time we do a new store or we open a new store. With all of this, makes us very confident to be able to fulfill the commitment of doubling our retail productivity in the long term.
Thank you very much. Now the word to Rodrigo Bazán, the CEO of Thom Browne.
Thank you. Good morning, almost afternoon. It's great to be with all of you here. Thank you for the ones that came to the store yesterday. We really appreciate having you there. I'm gonna speak on behalf of Thom Browne and the 650 that make Thom Browne every single day. Before we go to the slides, I thought it was important just to give you some background because we are in a capital markets presentation. We will be perceived as an engine of growth. We have grown the last seven to 10 years, absolutely. I want to speak first about the uniqueness of Thom Browne, the brand and our proposition. There's four points which are very, very important to understand that. The uniqueness and the proposition that we have in the luxury world, we believe is based on a client-focused approach. We're extremely client-focused.
We have a unique client. We also strive for excellence in the relationship with the client. The company, therefore, I believe is very interesting because we have a very intimate relationship with the client. The product consistency, and with product consistency, to clarify, is Thom Browne has been creating product with a certain design and quality for 20 years. That is, creates 20 years of very, very coherent brand expression. Therefore, we are a very resilient brand and company. In COVID, we managed to bounce back very quickly because of that. We managed to build a DTC business because Thom Browne for 20 years has been getting a message extremely clear to the outside world. It was a small community, it became a larger community. We expect it to be a much larger community.
We couldn't be doing our jobs expanding the business unless there would be such a consistent product at Thom Browne. We will not lose a client. If we don't do anything wrong, we should continue to build clients on top of clients. The client often is our ambassador as well, and we appreciate that. The client loyalty for us is key in our success, is loyalty brand to client to brand. We are aiming, as we'll explain later, for a significant expansion of clients, but the most important, we'll continue to engage and even stronger with the client that we have today. It is true that we are under the scrutiny of the financial community, but regardless, I want to assure you that we have a total passion and focus on growing clients at Thom Browne. This is, has been, and will be.
Point number two is product. The uniqueness from the Thom Browne proposition is that it's a brand that you don't have that many out there that starts from men's. Seven years ago, we took a commitment to really make into women's. It had started a few years before that, and we made it successfully into women's. This is unique. Thom is creating unique product on both genders, which is quite unique in situation. Both collections are also aligned. There's no different takes like some other companies. We see with these opportunities in other categories, in eyewear we have a very strong business. In kids, we just launched last year, proof of concept. We did extremely well. This all relates to the product consistency in the way that Thom has created product. Point number three, in our strategies, we grow clients faster than stores.
We open stores to serve clients, but first we expand clients. We're gonna open in San Francisco in a couple of months, but we have had very significant clients in San Francisco for the last 10 years. Growth. I'm not trying to sell you growth. We're creating a platform, a platform that drives sustainable, healthy growth and has a respect for the client and the environment. This is extremely positive growth for us. The revenue growth is way smaller, I believe, than the brand equity growth that we've been pushing, we are pushing, and will be pushing always. There's also the do's and don'ts for us, and this is a conversation that's very good to have always at the board level and with the shareholder. What do we need? A platform. The platform is firstly the talent in the company.
Today, in this conversation, is the client value management. The culture in the company to grow clientele and keep a strong clientele with us. The platform is roughly 150 stores, as you will see in the presentation in the future. We also need a continuous evolution in the products. Very important. I said continuous evolution, it's not a change. This comes from Thom, and this makes a relationship that will keep with you for a long, long time. What we don't need, and this is often a good conversation with the board, we don't need expensive stores. We don't need to be in main streets. The most prime location that we have in a main street, a street of traffic, is Via Sant'Andrea that you saw yesterday, and this is something that was referred by Zegna.
I don't know if we would have gone and opened that store, but it came at great conditions, so with support at that time of the board, we did it in the darkness of COVID. We just want to be in the right environment, and we want to build a team. As I mentioned yesterday, usually in 18 months it takes us to build a really, really good team and clientele. We are present, don't get me wrong, not only in cool, off the beaten path locations. We're present in the most significant department stores and in great locations. We are present in the best malls in the world. We are not gonna be opening stores just to fit a significant rent to a landlord. We don't want bad growth. We don't want any promotional growth at all at Thom Browne. In fact, in the last.
We learned during COVID to delay our markdowns, to keep them tighter, and to have even deeper percentage of full price sales. We don't need to push growth. For us, growth is a natural consequence of a great product and a great client relationship. We focus on excellence in product, client relationship, and service. This is, I believe, our uniqueness, and this is our Thomness to do business. With this, I would like to share with you a couple of minutes summary of a film that would air May 1 in American CBS. Thom had an interview with Alina Cho. Alina knows Thom for a long, long time, and she shot this actually during March 2020, before we went into COVID lockdowns.
Finishing touches on a collection he'd unveil the very next day.
Welcome to my world.
A world uniquely Thom Browne. Thom Browne reimagined the classic men's suit.
I was doing something that nobody cared about, and people said that to me.
The Thom Browne shrunken suit eventually caught on.
He was really, like, the first breakout menswear designer that America has produced in decades.
Browne has dressed everyone from Michelle Obama to singer Katy Perry. He has a huge following among athletes like LeBron James. In 2018, the fashion designer sold a majority stake in his company for an estimated $500 million. Even now, at a time when other fashion brands are folding, Browne is expanding, launched a kids line, and says sales at his company are up because more people are dressing up. Just two days ago, Thom Browne was at it again, featuring one of his unconventional signatures, men in skirts.
I love the idea of men entertaining different things or just opening their eyes to different ideas.
You don't personally know what it's like to wear a skirt, or have you tried one on?
I have actually never tried one on.
Oh, come on, Thom.
Thank you. It's unique because Thom Browne, I always say that we're gonna be turning 20 years next year, but the first 10 years is where the gigantic amount of hard work came to define the brand. He almost went out of business, and he eventually became a very successful business and is respected and represented in museums and built a really good culture in the company, which we have. Moving to the next page in the presentation, what's our vision? We have a clear vision to double our end clients, most importantly remaining very connected with the current clients. When I say end clients, it's anybody that's been interacting with a Thom Browne product today. This goes through retail and wholesale clients. Therefore, we will be at least doubling our revenues in the next five years. I've joined this company seven years ago.
We've grown 5x in the last seven years, so I feel very confident about this if we do it right. This is, I believe, a realistic target. We're aiming to double our clients, and this is a reasonable and also doable target for us in the future. This is all healthy growth for us, and this is a trajectory which is underway. It's not something that we'll start to do tomorrow. I just want to make it clear. 5x in the last seven years, everything's in place for us to be able to tell this story and to show these results. If anything, we tend to be very understated in the way we give ourselves targets, and we work extra hard in strategies. Moving to the next page, we couldn't be achieving this without very clear product strategies.
We're aiming to accelerate further the growth in women's, to exceed at least 40% of our business. We're also planning to grow categories business across men's and women's. We want to be recognized that usually you will think about Thom Browne when you're looking at outerwear, sportswear in general, shirting, accessories, and footwear. As part of this, just to put into perspective, when I joined seven years ago, women's was just over 10% of the company. From 10%, we grew significantly. This didn't happen by chance. There was a total commitment by Thom and by all of us at Thom Browne to evolve the product, to define the product, to create the image, and get visibility of Thom Browne women's around the world. Today, Thom Browne is recognized as a brand of men's and women's. It wasn't the case.
When I joined the company, people said, "Thom Browne is a great menswear brand, not women's." We are also looking at, we actually have taken over right now the eyewear business and children's wear. We believe we can do a much better share of merchandise and strategies and price points. These are businesses which are already very profitable and have a proven business success and have significant growth potential. We are furthering developing the made-to-measure men's and women's is launching in the next six months, fragrance, beauty, and homeware. All the items that are in the last bullet point are mostly focused on DTC, and these are the items that will allow us to be able to interact with the client in a very engaging way.
Our direct-to-consumer business, we believe that we will be building a clientele, a retail network to 150 stores by 2026 and growing clients faster than stores. We want to maintain the right size of stores. We don't want to. If anything, like we saw in Milan, we outgrew the store where we did men's in Via Gesù, we opened the women's store. In London, we did something similar. We are exploring opportunities for conversion to concession. There's at least $75 million of currently very successful retail operations that can be converted into concessions in the next couple of years. Client value management is a very important. I mentioned this word several times, and it's a very, very important element here.
We cannot be expected to grow clients without a very clear focus and team that will be focusing on growing clients. We are also looking at expanding the network. We have a proven business model in North America, where we believe there's a much larger opportunity for Thom Browne. We have a very strong business in China, where we saw it bouncing back very, very fast already in 2020. We have a great business in Korea. We're looking at further expanding there. We're also looking at expanding in markets where we have a bigger opportunity also to grow, which is Japan, Europe, and the U.K.. We have made a proof of concept in areas such as Middle East with Dubai. This is an opportunity that happened through the Zegna network of stores. We opened the first store.
It wasn't necessarily our market in the world, but we made a proof of concept within two years, and that's a very profitable store today. We also managed to open during the lockdowns of COVID in Singapore, very successfully also opened in Taiwan, first store, looking into the second store. We're also looking at retail markets that potentially we could be open because we have clients there, such as Australia, New Zealand, and Latin America. E-business, just to give a point of view, we started from scratch. I often say that seven years ago, we didn't have any system. We didn't have any infrastructure. We didn't have an e-commerce system. So we had the virtue to do everything from scratch. It was e-business, omnichannel from day one. We managed to partner with Farfetch back in the days across all platforms.
The business has grown 10x in the last seven years, and it is the least promotional business on Farfetch platform. We're looking to furthering developing this. We have an opportunity to grow with a very successful thombrowne.com, with a very successful marketplace model, which is currently on Farfetch, on Tmall, and soon in other regional marketplaces. We have also started successfully to do social commerce in certain areas of the world. Our vision is to understand that the touchpoints with the clients, they come to thombrowne.com to know about us, and we drive transactions and also position the brand. We're minding the gap also between the image and the commercial. Often, you have an image of Thom himself, of the show. The idea with thombrowne.com is to be able to mind the gap and show you in images the relatability of all the products that we really have.
If anything, I feel that we are way more advanced on the product ranges than the product perception and the marketing opportunity. This is a breakdown of how we prioritize what we do in every, each one of our platforms. Marketing, we couldn't be achieving what we're trying to achieve if we don't at least try to aim for more than 10 x the visibility we have today. This is significant visibility, and this is going to be done through three different areas where we put a major amount of focus. A third of that will for sure come from shows, VIPs and celebrities, and all our work, all the celebrities you've been seeing dressed Thom Browne are totally unpaid. It's totally organic work and events. One third is we've never invested one single page in advertising the company, so a third will be through global digital communication and marketing.
We are investing as we operate platforms such as Tmall. We do invest marketing behind. Marketing for us is very simple. It's different than the other pillars because it's focusing on clients and product. A third will happen through client activations and local communications that we'll be doing in different markets. Client value management, this is a very important topic of the conversation. We are committing to roll out the Salesforce platform full interface in the next quarter. Just to put into perspective, I said we didn't have any system seven years ago. We fully revamped all our retail systems two years ago.
In the darkness of COVID, and it wasn't planned before, basically in May 2020, we're all working remotely, we had had the opportunity to work with a data scientist before, and what we did is we started to work on the future of client value management and analysis of data by client and product. A huge amount of work happened since 2020. We invested in data warehouses, data sets. Right now, we are doing the largest ever commitment that the company had in terms of CapEx and interactions, interfaces with Salesforce. We chose the most expensive tool in the market because of the simple relation. We have the most exceptional client, the most exceptional product, the most exceptional talent that is facing the client. We wouldn't be giving them a lower tool to work with them. This will be fully functioning by September in the company.
We'll continue to develop our single client view, our customer program. We'll continue to develop our global as well as the regional client program, and our vision is to have 400 sales associates with a device and be able to understand the client activity. Remember, it's not that this is new to Thom Browne. Thom Browne started from a made-to-measure atelier. Thom used to open the door. David Bowie buzzed the store in Little West 12th to get in. He often told clients that wasn't for them, and maybe what they asked wasn't what he was doing. He always says, "I did marketing. I dressed like this every single day. I went for coffee, for lunch, and they saw me." There is at Thom Browne a religious approach to clienteling.
I say that because their head of retail global has been traveling the planet for the last seven years with me. He stayed at times several months in certain markets such as China to build the clientele. I remember opening the store in Dubai, and the first day or two, she'd asked me the sales, and I think they were zero actually. When I asked this gentleman for what he was planning to do, tomorrow we do made-to-measure training. It was genius because even when you're struggling at the beginning to build a clientele, you have to even more focus on what you do really well. Eventually, two years after, now Chinese pass by Dubai, as Gildo pointed out, and we have a very successful store that makes our proof of concept to expand in the future in the Middle East.
Just to give you, one more fact, our ratio of one-time clients today is less than 50%. This is year-to-date this year. Our ratio of how much we converted to date of business year to date from clientele is 47%. This is naturally our first large flagship was in Tribeca, 100 Hudson, so you don't have natural traffic. What is it for us, client value management? It's not a simple CRM. The difference with Thom Browne is you have a unique opportunity with a client. We have a lot of team members working on this project that come from outstanding luxury business and luxury brands. They had never seen such a high quality of first purchase by a client. We're talking about a client that buys 1.6-1.8 units.
They had never seen this quality of first-time purchase. We know that we will not be growing the VIC. VIC is somebody that buys every single category or a show piece or $80,000 +. We'll be continuing to keep a very strong relationship with them. We have relationship with clients that buy $5,000-$10,000, and we believe we can significantly grow that. How can we grow that? We have all the tools right now to be able to not only locally but also globally track and understand, but we're committing to fully understand and recognize that we want to know what they are, what they like, and what's the path of experience in repeat purchases. Understanding the clients for us is everything. The engagement, even during lockdown, has been outstanding.
The sales in part of the world which sales are down because the stores are closed, through clienteling are up right now. We are capturing data. We became much better at capturing data, not only locally, but also through client value management. The big commitment is to know that client globally and support through CVM, not only retail, but also wholesale and marketing, because this feeds us back in terms of the engagement with product. Purchase behavior is pure analytics. The qualitative knowledge of the client for us gives us a huge opportunity to engage with the client in a personalized way. Want to know what the family looks like for that client. Want to know the gifting patterns of that person. Want to know the type of taste and moments where that person want to be contacted.
The long relationship that person wants to be contacted through different types of emails, phone calls, texts, WhatsApp, Weibo, and so on. We are working on this to understand the client data, identify behaviors to further engage with them to create, drive value for client and business. Our dream is to understand who I am, what's my gifting moment, what is my travel moments, how to contact me. We look at Amazon is fantastic at what they do. They know exactly whatever you purchase, but they are not engaging with you to ask you what you would like to do. The vision is that not only we have fantastic sales associates in the stores that know you, but if that person eventually moves to another role in the company or to another brand, the company knows you.
You step into a store, and you're known by the brand because you purchased in Seoul, in Tokyo, in Milan, or in New York. We want to take the best of both worlds, and that's what we really like doing. We don't want to be missing on that customer that pass by the store. We are not working on silos. That's a big difference to what can happen. Client value management connects everything from transactions to analytics to campaigns to communities and service. As a closing remark, I hope this give you a clear picture of what we're trying to do at Thom Browne, and this is not something we'll start to do tomorrow. This is something that we have been doing, that we are doing, and will continue to be doing at Thom Browne. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everybody.
For those who don't know me, I'm Gianluca Tagliabue. I'm the group CFO, and I take care of also of the supply chain of the finished product, not of textile, which is not under my accountability. We started one year ago to have financial communication. We were very private. Around one year ago, we started first with a sponsor to communicate our goals, strategy, and underlying numbers. Through the IPO roadshow, we opened to some others, and then, through the final step of the SEC filing, we made it much more public. All this, we called it Piano Futuro.
Piano Futuro was our plan for the future, and my goal today is to first make a checkup of where we stand against Piano Futuro, of what we promised, or probably we promised and over-deliver in a very cautious way. Second is to see our entry speed into 2022. Third, our guidance, how we see the near term and how we see the midterm to give substance to the numbers that Gildo anticipated before as our ambitious ambitions for the midterm. The good news is that our Piano Futuro, that was 2021, 2022, 2023, has been proven cautious at the first check. That was 2021 numbers. We came out very close to 2019. We over-delivered in terms of profitability. Our e-commerce doubled as a group compared to 2019.
Of course, Thom Browne is ahead of the Zegna brand, but also the Zegna brand itself is catching up quickly, and we generated a lot of cash. This is a flavor, but I will feed you with some numbers more specifically. In the black, you see the actual numbers of 2021. In the gray, it was our outlook of last year during the IPO process and the due diligence process. We promised to be north of EUR 1.2 billion and then make a further step in the EUR 1.3 billion-EUR 1.4 billion range in 2022. We came out slightly south of EUR 1.3 billion, so 7% higher than our promise. Specifically, on the margin, we have been proven probably to be too cautious. We promised to land at 9%.
We had 8% in 2019, the last normal year. We landed with 11.5%. I will come back to the reason, but basically, it's all the execution and the strategy that was laid out before by Gildo, Rodrigo, Angelo, and Edo is progressing, and we are confident to say that it is progressing as we imagined, quicker than we imagined. Now, let's step into the beginning of 2022. As you might know, we split the numbers into two segments. Zegna segment, which is the Zegna brand, the textile business, and what we call third-party brands, when we produce for Gucci, Dunhill, Tom Ford. Thom Browne segment, it's on a standalone basis, the Thom Browne brand. We finished with the Q1 numbers with a 25% growth, very much balanced between Zegna segment and Thom Browne segment.
I will slice it by product, by channel, and by geography in the next pages. This is the geographical view. What is, I think, the most important indication of how our strategy is progressing is this number. Of course, we will come back, I'm sure, with a lot of questions on China. Let's for a second make an exercise of isolating China out, because of course, there is a distortion, and we will come out talking about that. If we isolate the group numbers, excluding China, we are 48% growth compared to an easier comparison, but 48% is well ahead of most of our peers.
This is an indication that the brand repositioning of Zegna, the journey of Thom Browne, the execution of textiles is doing its path in a very quick way, where North America, U.S., for all the reasons that were laid out by Angelo, but also on the wholesale side, that is an area that we control less, we are seeing good traction, not just in the Q1 numbers, but also on the orders of fall/winter 2022, which are an indication of our next six months from now on. Europe is growing nicely in the region of 38% with some markets where we are doing extremely well. Gildo mentioned Dubai. Dubai is the epicenter of a new world of luxury. U.K. is doing well. France, which was probably one of the areas where we were a bit behind, is gaining traction on the Zegna brand.
Latin America, for how small it is, but it's doubling. Japan, it's growing. China is flat. China is flat. If we make two pictures, one at the end of February and one at the end of March, at the end of February, which was isolating the volatility of the current shutdowns, we were double-digit up to a very good 2021. Of course, March had its slowdown, and then I come back to this into the guidance of 2022, sharing what is the assumption that we bake into our 2022 guidance. In terms of product, we divide our revenues by the Zegna brand, Thom Browne brand, textile, third-party brands that again is when we use our supply chain to serve other brands. Zegna branded product was 22% up with sneakers, shoes, not sneakers, shoes, 42% growth.
The Zegna luxury leisurewear, which made a further step up to 51% incidence on the overall numbers, made to measure +38%. When we talk about make to measure now, we don't talk anymore about only tailoring make to measure. We talk also about casual luxury make to measure, which is representing an interesting stake of the business. Thom Browne was growing 22% at higher speed in women. This growth is not just footprint growth, but it's like for like. Textile had a very interesting 64% bounce back. All the different offering of our portfolio, whether it's the Lanificio Zegna more classical cloth or the Dondi jersey, are very much in tune to the new demand, both for tailoring and for the casual luxury.
Third-party brands, after a slowdown of their demand in the last 18 months, they were coming back with strong requirements of product, +56%. If we make the last view, it's by channel. The direct-to-consumer channel is the predominant channel. Last year it was 66%. Of course, this year there was a slowdown in the incidence because of the lockdown in China and because of the good performance of textile and third-party brands. We are in the region of 60%-65% of business coming from DTC. This I will not comment, but you have the numbers. The network is stable compared to the one that we disclosed at the end of 2021. At this point, let's move looking forward, so our guidance. First, let's share our view of 2022.
We communicated in April a view of low-teens growth and a step up, further step up, not just a little bit. We are confirming that guidance, although of course we're very well aware of the volatility of China. I will dissect why we can confirm. It's not a leap of faith, but why we can confirm which are the underlying assumptions of our top and bottom line indication. On the revenues, we are assuming that the current disruption in Greater China, where we have today roughly 15 stores closed, is going to continue through the end of summer. In the guidance, we bake this. If this happens before, we will be ahead of the low-teens. If it happens afterwards, we might be slightly short. This is the underlying assumption which we want to make clear.
Through September, APAC, U.S. and the EMEA, we are assuming to have a 30% growth through the year with possible some upside, especially in U.S. and Dubai. We might have a potential risk if the disruption in China goes on, but we have on the other side, a positive upside on these areas where we are capturing a 30% as our underlying assumption with U.S. higher than 30%, more in the 40%. Russia and Ukraine, we are assuming no further extension of the crisis. We have already canceled the fall/winter shipments. We delivered the spring 2022, we got paid, so we don't have credit risk, but we are assuming that the business there doesn't come back and doesn't worsen further. In terms of Zegna branded product, we are assuming a 10%.
On the wholesale side, it's easy because we have already orders. We are assuming a good double-digit growth of made-to-measure. In Q1, we were 38%. There are some assumptions that probably can prove cautious, that might counterbalance the risk of having more than September disruption in China. Thom Browne, it's between 20%-25% growth through the year. Textiles and third party, we know there are orders. We can predict a good 20% up with textiles, more than 20% up. E-commerce, we see a growth rate double than the average of the group. All this talks about revenues. One comment that Gildo mentioned before is running at full capacity, the factories, that is my other job, I'm not talking about numbers, makes things easier.
Of course, we need to step up the plan that Edo was mentioning of 400% growth + 100% year-on-year on Triple Stitch. We need to step up the production quite quickly in order to cope with the demand. This creates a fantastic, fixed cost absorption to the P&L because the people are there, whether you produce 10 m or 15 m, it's the same. Of course, there is direct workers, but all the fixed cost know-how is well and nicely absorbed by the volumes, and we are running at full capacity in order to rush and deliver on time the one branded collection of fall/winter. That's the reason why we believe that our guidance is still valid. Second, why we believe that the EUR 2 billion is not shooting in the sky, why we believe that we can achieve that.
One reason, of course, Rodrigo mentioned before, the math is easy. Thom Browne made EUR 264 million of sales in 2021, and we see the potential to double. That's one building block above and beyond the ones that Edo was mentioning. Which are the buttons we need to be sure that we push in order to get to the EUR 2 billion sales? There are several. We are not betting on one element. It's a portfolio of ideas. Of course, store productivity, what Angelo mentioned, we think that we can increase the store productivity of Zegna by 50%. Internally, we run for doubling. But in the midterm, to be again on the safe side of our promises, the number, the EUR 2 billion matches with the 50%.
In terms of Thom Browne, the stores of Thom Browne are smaller, and so their productivity is higher than Zegna. Probably they can have some room for improvement in some markets, especially on the west side. I think that the biggest opportunity in terms of store productivity is on the Zegna network, on the 240 stores of Zegna, where we see we can build the 50% growth. You can make easily the math of what it means. The price and mix is one of the drivers why we can achieve the productivity. Productivity comes from all the levers of Angelo, but definitely it comes from units, conversion, UPT, cross-selling. It comes from higher price.
It comes from a higher positioning of our collection because we leave behind the Zegna, and we turn into a higher and more exclusive offering. There is also price mix increase. We already planned for fall/winter 2022 a high single-digit price like-for-like items. For instance, the Triple Stitch were not placed at EUR 750, were placed well below, but we raised the volume and the bar because we didn't see any resistance. We saw that we were legitimate to offer products at higher price. In terms of price and mix increase, Thom Browne, again, is probably already well-positioned. In terms of category expansions, we see more opportunities in, of course, in killer categories. Killer categories for us are Triple Stitch, Oasi Cashmere, five-pocket pants, and made-to-measure.
Those icons are the ones where there should be a comma here, made-to-measure, comma, leather. We are seeing those as the items where we can bring more business. In terms of Thom Browne is women, definitely where they can catch up, leather and licensing, because eyewear, for instance, is the next phase for the business in Thom Browne. Collabs, we will disclose at least three collabs by year-end, two in the next few weeks, because they are connected with either the sales campaign or the fashion show, so that's why we want to maintain confidentiality so far. The third will be by end of year. In terms of number of stores, the network of Zegna, I'm not saying that it's stable, because we are changing stores, especially in some in China.
The cool location might change in some cities, but the overall net number should be. Can grow. We are 245, but could grow in the dozens, not in the 50 incremental stores. Instead, Thom Browne has 51 stores at the end of March. I want to clarify the directly operated stores. We think that we can almost double the number of directly operated stores. When Rodrigo was mentioning before, 150 was already also considering wholesale mono-brand stores. The doubling of Thom Browne is with less than doubling the number of stores. In terms of geography, there will be an opportunity for us to rebalance in 2021. Of course, China was the predominant number of our business.
It will still be, but we see good momentum, good opportunity in North America, Middle East, Southeast Asia, Singapore, Australia as well, and throughout the network locals. With the clienteling approach, with the new styling that allows people to buy from Monday through Sunday. People that can dress the offering of Zegna for weekdays, for weekend, in an elegant and comfortable way. Textile is ready to capture the opportunities both from formal wear and especially leisure wear in the next year. All these numbers look into an organic growth. In the EUR 2 billion, we are not taking any step up, I mean, from potential acquisitions that we are always looking at, but these are not to the numbers. Instead, the second number that Gildo mentioned was the 15%. As I said, we.
The outlook was in 2021 to get to 9%. In reality, we delivered 11.5%. If we look backwards, the reason why we were ahead are not one-off reasons, but are structural reasons that are there to stay. The quality of our sell-through at full price, the initial margin with higher prices, operational leverage, both in the OpEx side as well as in the fixed industrial cost, both for textile and the finished product supply chain. The fact that Angelo was mentioning before all the levers of the store productivity above the equation, but there is also the denominator that is the sales square, the square meters. We have been constantly optimizing the square meters of our stores, and now that we squeeze the offering from three brands into one on Zegna, this will become also easier.
We can optimize spaces, we can optimize rents, and we can optimize investment of capital. The reducing not needed square meter is also one other lever to optimize store productivity, which is the number one driver to bring us to 15%. All of this, we include in this, especially for the next two years, a step up in marketing and CapEx. Marketing, we are in the region of 5%. If you take out textile and third-party brands, which are B2B, we are between 5% and 6% in terms of marketing activities on revenues. We will step up by one to two points for a couple of years to amplify on one side the awareness of Thom Browne and on the other side, the awareness of the new Zegna direction.
In terms of CapEx for this year and next year, we have in mind to have roughly EUR 80 million of CapEx, which we can well afford with the financial position that we have. We will use part of our financial strength to make the journey easier to the EUR 2 billion and the 15% by, for a couple of years, overspending in marketing and depreciation or, if you wish, CapEx. Everything self-financed with our current positive surplus. This, in a nutshell, where we stand, why we believe that our recipe is translated in good numbers better than the ones that we anticipated one year ago. Thank you.
There is an old saying, at least in my family, “Lead by example.” What I learned, stick to the DNA of the brand. Be real, be genuine. Try to keep a very close contact with the customer and listen to him. Grow your own resources. Watch what your people do. Don't overexpand. Stay united. Understand that if the family is united, the business will be strong.
Thank you very much everyone for the patience and the interest in listening to the presentation of our management. I know we're running out of time, and, you know, well ahead of plans of schedule. I still would like to give you the opportunity to ask a couple of questions before we head to a lovely lunch, and to our factory visit and the visit of our Zegna. If Rodrigo, Gildo, Gianluca, Angelo, and Edoardo want to come up to the stage. One announcement for the people traveling to Malpensa, please make contact with Lorenza, in white behind, to arrange the next steps in this day so that you can all make sure you are at Malpensa on time.
Can you show who Lorenza is? Lorenza.
Yeah, she has already waved.
Lorenza is behind.
Any question? Do we have the microphone? Okay, John Guy from Jefferies.
Thank you very much. Maybe just to start, thank you very much indeed for your time today, and congratulations. It's been a very insightful and exciting presentation so far. I was delighted to be here, so thank you. My first question is to do with your manufacturing, the verticality of it. How are you adapting your production to deal with demand? Are you going to move more to a lean manufacturing concept when you think about working capital stock management, in order to effectively maximize inventory days and cash flow? That's my first question. Second question is on the geographic rebalancing. Is the idea effectively to reach roughly one-third across EMEA, U.S., and APAC ultimately, and effectively de-emphasizing Mainland China, Greater China a little bit more?
My third question, sorry, it's three, on store productivity, for the Zegna brand, how many low-hanging stores are there in terms of relocations and store size changes that you can make, just like the Newbury Street example that we saw earlier? Thank you.
The first one for Gianluca, I would say. The second for Gildo, and the third, Angelo, Gildo.
In terms of supply chain, we already, maybe it was not pointed out clearly, but we already have a specialized unit network. We have a network of facilities or plants that are specialized by product. Not far away from here, we have our plant doing knitwear. Not far away from here, we have a unit doing sleeve units. In Parma, we have two factories, which will become three, doing leather outerwear and shoes. We have all the capacity inside. To steer from only formal wear to a more casual leisure wear has already happened. What we are doing is to gain flexibility, and it's in the dataset that you received.
We are investing. One of the most important investments are in intensifying the capacity of internal in knitwear because we believe that knitwear, and so we are purchasing new machines for new fineness. We are investing in San Pietro Mosezzo, that is the sleeve units here, to create an island, we call it Isola della Complessità, Island of Complexity, where we produce, we give like a fast track for prototypes. We do approach all the complex products, for instance, VIP. We take out from the main line of the product production, where we go for efficiency, we isolate the complexity into a 25-30 people doing all that is complex. We are adapting in terms of being flexible in this way, but the capacity in terms of knowing all the products we already have.
In terms of investment, of course, the move to Essentials can be a slight investment, but it's not material. We believe that at the end of the year, we should not have an overburden in terms of inventory for the move to the Essentials, especially because we picked fast turners, so we are investing in items that have high rotation. We don't fear an overburden in terms of inventory.
The question on.
May I add?
If I may add one thing on the supply chain speed, it's the most important part going forward because of the turbulence or because of the changes of opportunities on the market. Unless you are a reliable and speedy supply chain, I don't care whether it's textile, whether it's shoes, whether it's knitwear, you don't go very far. I think our aim is to put investment in order to even do better in the speed, in time to market, probably time to market makes the idea. I think that being so integrated an organization, from the farm to the textile to the manufacturing helps better planning. Can you imagine what the planning job was to plan ahead wholesale, retail of three different brands? It was a nightmare. Many costs, prototype, samplers, mixing, change. Now one brand, 50% of the SKU, 30% essential.
Wow, let's make it happen. I think we have to be present in every business unit that we are going to manage or buy, traceability and speed. Excellence is a given. It's indisputable. It has to be excellent otherwise you're out. Second question, yes, balanced growth. We are trying our best. I think we are doing more than our best, to be honest with you. I was positively surprised by the stellar performance of some of the geographies. Until China is not doing what it should, it surely is a very welcome news. I am one of the positive-minded thinkers on China. I do believe that China will be back. Don't ask me when, but I think it will be back, and it will be back strong again, so we are ready for that.
I can tell you that because of my experience in China. I think we have seen at least three comebacks, and I don't think that they can afford not having another strong comeback, and we are ready for that. I keep a positive mind, but we are prudent, let's put it this way, as Gianluca said it. However, full speed on any other opportunity that we can go for, and I think that there are more opportunities than what we thought. There are some businesses that could do slightly better than what we planned, as Gianluca and Rodrigo has highlighted. I am relatively positive on both sides. You know, an entrepreneur has to be positive, has to think ahead. That's the way to be.
I think that it's a positivity with realism based on realistic things and on realistic expectation.
Angelo, on productivity.
Okay, it works. On productivity, it's fair to say, and I'll start from standalone stores, that globally we have an opportunity to reduce by 25%. In certain regions more than others. In the U.S., for instance, that's even higher. Every single new U.S. location will be between 25% and 50% smaller. This is for standalone stores. Now, they won't all happen at the same time because, as you know, we have long leases. If you had a 10-year lease, it would take 10%. Every year, 10% of the stores will shrink, so you can run the math. Different story, though, for the non-standalone stores, and this is the importance of a concession. Switching from wholesale to concession will give us an incredible uplift in productivity.
If I may add, I think if you do the math, if you look at the lease liabilities we have in the financials and the cost in the P&L can come out with a ratio of three to four years average. Not all the stores will require a shrinkage, but on average, probably we have three to four years of duration of leases. You know, anytime, like we did in Ginza or Newbury, we were looking.
Beverly Hills coming up.
Beverly Hills, we will do the same. In several locations, we will optimize the space to do the equation that Angelo was mentioning, and that is a positive, a powerful driver for our journey.
Susy Tibaldi from UBS.
Hi. Is it working? Yes. Thank you so much for the presentation and the amazing day. First one on thinking about the top line, which is a combination, of course, of the price mix and also your volume growth. This year you confirmed your 2022 guidance despite the fact that China obviously is seeing a big impact. It seems that the key drivers so far have been the U.S., the American consumer, and the Middle Eastern. Sorry. I was just wondering also in terms of price, we are seeing now big price increases throughout the whole industry. Do you think that this pricing. Like, where do you see your brand in terms of positioning?
Because right now you have a certain positioning also versus your peers, and there is clearly a scope to improve that further. Is there a level that you have in mind, or is it like a relationship between the demand and the sort of pricing power that you have? Like, how much do you see the pricing increasing from here? Also on the sneakers, you made the example of potential that you're moving to EUR 750 and there is no, you know, resistance from the consumer. Do you have a level in mind of how you want to position yourself relative to peers?
Listen, we are not talking about math here. We are talking about being on the market and getting the right feeling and do what we have to do. So far we have done well.
Alessandro Sartori created some high-value product with the help of the textile division, so the value of our product gone up, and that gave us opportunity to entertain better margin. After having said that, let's talk about competition. Cucinelli and Loro Piana are our competitor, period. Hermès, in somehow for a certain part, is our competitor. We are in that league, so we are shooting for that league. You know, we have to be careful. It's not that we're going to, "Okay, let's go," or whatever, but we know what we are doing. I think that just by keeping the pulse of the market, and I think it was enlightening.
Ability of the business. You're pushing into the made-to-measure segment, which, for example, if we think about different adjacent sectors like jewelry and we think about the really high-end jewelry, obviously it comes with a significant price tag, but typically it's less profitable than the more commercialized lines. I was wondering when it comes to the profitability of the made to measure, obviously it comes with a price premium. How scalable is it in terms of also the relative productivity and profitability? Relative to the group average, would you say the made to measure is accretive to margin, in line, or dilutive?
Take it.
Oh, no, it's accretive. The math is simple. We price it 20%-25% higher than the ready-to-wear. You don't have leftovers. The process of producing is not that different. We just have internal process in the factories like the fast track that go faster and go above and beyond the others. The incremental cost is not as much, and we can gain and enjoy good profitability. Growing, as we are growing made-to-measure, also out of tailoring, also out of formal wear, is an interesting way to increase the profitability. You don't have the leftovers that is the pain in the neck of any ready-to-wear apparel player. It's all cash.
Thank you.
Okay. I think we need to stop here with the questions. I'm sorry, we are running really late. I think there is an opportunity for everyone to mingle with the management, so you can ask your questions over lunch. Thank you very much, and we also close the webcast here. Thank you.
Thank you.