BasicNet’s co-chief executives Lorenzo and Alessandro Boglione: “We will strengthen Woolrich’s leadership and international presence in the outdoor lifestyle category”

Immediately after buying Woolrich’s European operations from the L-Gam fund, the Turin-based BasicNet group outlined to FashionNetwork.com, in the words of its two CEOs, brothers Lorenzo and Alessandro Boglione, its initial plans to restore the iconic US brand to prominence.

“The transaction amounts to €90 million and covers the brand’s rights for Europe in their entirety, Turkey, and all the company’s entities operating across the continent. The company is expected to generate consolidated turnover of around €90 million this year,” confirms Alessandro Boglione to FashionNetwork.com.

Boglione is a second-generation leader at the company, which was founded in 1995 by his father, Marco. “The Woolrich brand is still in great shape; it enjoys strong standing in the market, is healthy, benefits from robust distribution and excellent products, and retains a very strong identity,” he said. “However, over the past four to five years the company has not performed well in terms of profitability, which has led to significant financial strain that has affected all other areas of development. It is the latter that we are acquiring at a challenging moment, not the brand.”

In practice, the Woolrich brand will, so to speak, be “split in two,” Lorenzo Boglione confirms. “That is, between Europe and the rest of the world. Given that BasicNet’s turnover in 2024 was €409 million, the addition of these €90 million should take group turnover to half a billion. In the first nine months of 2025 we are slightly up on BasicNet’s turnover, which, in the current environment, is far from a given, and profitability is stable.”

“One of the reasons — aside from the love we’ve always had for the brand — we believe we can make a difference is that we can place the company and the Woolrich label within a much larger corporate structure, with capabilities and experience that we can deploy immediately,” adds the other CEO, Lorenzo Boglione. “Given that the company’s turnover in the last five years has dropped significantly, over the past year management has begun to implement a series of measures to improve profitability, but it is certain that, in terms of turnover, the last five to six years have not been easy for Woolrich.”

The deal is being finalised within an extremely difficult and complex economic environment. “I believe that, by the nature of our business at BasicNet, investments like this have to materialise precisely at times when companies and brands are looking for a revival,” Alessandro Boglione replies. “We can’t compete with large investors or companies much bigger than ours to make acquisitions when businesses are performing very well. We therefore have to invest in struggling brands in complicated market conditions; otherwise, we would not be financially competitive.”

Regarding brand strategy and product plans, Lorenzo Boglione indicates that BasicNet will aim to do two things. The first will be “to stay as faithful as possible to the brand’s history and its American roots, to its quality materials such as wool, which we consider a fantastic raw material in which we can invest heavily,” he says. “We will certainly focus squarely on outerwear, Woolrich’s core product, but we also want to move beyond the mono-season approach and ensure that the summer lines, or at least the non-winter months, become relevant for the brand.”

“From a distribution point of view, I believe that Woolrich’s current mix of retail, wholesale, and digital is very healthy and that the three channels should grow more or less proportionally,” assures Alessandro Boglione, who is keen to emphasise that “within the company’s scope there is an archive of 12,000 items that is invaluable to us. That will be our starting point for everything,” he adds, also because Woolrich “is a brand that in just over four years will celebrate its 200th anniversary. There’s a wealth of significant material in a 200-year archive, starting with woollens, passing through the Arctic Parka, and arriving at the latest collections.”

The Boglione brothers report that wholesale clearly remains the primary channel for Woolrich, followed by retail and then e-commerce. “We continue to believe that wholesale will be highly strategic for the development of the brand in all the countries where we will operate. The multi-brand channel certainly faces major challenges — we will have very big ones ahead — but it remains very strong. We do not think that brands like the ones we have in our portfolio can do without multi-brand retailers to tell their story, although digital — and, for other reasons, retail — will be the key to the future,” the CEOs reveal, adding that they “do not rule out further acquisitions in the future, perhaps for a brand with strong positioning, history and iconic products. We are very satisfied with the trajectory of our listing on the stock exchange at Piazza Affari, where our shares have been listed since 1999, which has enabled us to structure ourselves exceptionally well and has given us strong financial and administrative discipline.”

Finally, Alessandro and Lorenzo Boglione declined to make any statements or comments regarding any changes to management or the brand’s creative direction. “We will take several months to get to know all the people in Woolrich’s workforce well and go from there,” they said. “However, it would neither be generous nor fair to talk about any changes at this stage. What is important is to emphasise that we would like to bring the brand back to its glory days. We believe it may be a good time to try, and that Woolrich has every right and all the potential to do so.”