| Benetton's African Plan |
|
|
|
Page 1 of 2 Alessandro Benetton is carrying on his family’s decades-long commitment to social activism and responsibility with a cutting-edge program in the developing world  It's a steamy afternoon in West Africa as Alessandro Benetton and Youssou N’Dour are sitting down beside brightly colored murals of native workers, acknowledging the ebullient crowd before them, and preparing to transform Senegal into a nation of entrepreneurs. Outside the conference room, the free market is in full swing on the streets of Dakar: Women in vibrant boubous fry yams and grill meat for passersby, merchants hawk kola nuts and plastic sacks of drinking water, and hand-painted taxis covered in tribal slogans race alongside donkey carts. But scores of construction projects sit half finished and abandoned, and children everywhere beg for spare change, reflecting an economy that has been unable to get on its feet. If the partnership between Benetton, top executive of his family’s iconic $3 billion clothing empire, and N’Dour, Africa’s most popular musical superstar, bears fruit, Dakar may soon have more industry and fewer beggars.The Italian entrepreneur has come to Dakar to launch Africa Works, his company’s partnership with N’Dour’s microcredit program, Birima. It’s just part of Benetton’s master vision of how to revive the family business while staying true to its philanthropic ideals. Having only taken the helm last year, Benetton already has the company profitable and relevant again. Better still, he has found a way to make the company’s social consciousness pay dividends for people in the Third World as well, proving that philanthropy and profit can work together. Benetton Group has never been the standard multinational corporate giant. Alessandro’s father, the mercurial, now white-haired Luciano, started the company from the ground up in 1965, with his sister, two brothers, and a single sewing machine. It shot to international prominence in the 1980s, spearheaded by advertising and marketing campaigns that touted not only brightly colored styles but also dramatic, sometimes uncomfortable images that grappled with global ills such as AIDS and racism. Though it’s more common these days for a company to brand itself as a mindset rather than a mere manufacturer of goods, two decades ago Benetton’s combination of vibrant style and progressive message was nothing short of a revolution. “We’ve never seen any contradiction between social campaigns and an endeavor to make profits,” explains the 44-year-old Alessandro from the company’s headquarters, the sprawling, frescoed 16th-century Villa Minelli, outside of Treviso, Italy. “My father envisioned a brand communication dedicated to social consciousness. By promoting social issues and giving visibility to causes that would be otherwise difficult to advertise on a global level, we give the Benetton brand a larger value. The consumer sees us as a big group that’s open to the world and sensitive to problems in the environment or people’s everyday lives.” Some multibillion-dollar families might be hesitant about passing the reins to the favorite son. But Alessandro is no self-entitled Euro playboy. Even in his downtime, when he is kiteboarding or skiing at his winter home in Cortina with his wife, former Olympic skier Deborah Compagnoni, and their three children, he is fine-tuning his business acumen. “Sport teaches you discipline, concentration, how to use your strength, how to manage your resources, how to understand when you should hold back and when to give your all,” he says. Another prime avocation for the Benetton family—Alessandro in particular—is travel. “I’ve always kept in mind something Marcel Proust said: ‘The real journey of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes,’ ” he says. “I see travel as an experience rather than an adventure—a way of meeting other cultures and enriching our knowledge. And it’s fundamental to Benetton’s global success. If you really want to have a flavor for the market and tastes of the consumer in another part of the world, you have to travel.” That mindset is what brought Benetton to Dakar in February, to inaugurate what may be the company’s most important foray into corporate social responsibility to date. Though Benetton Group has not released a concrete figure, the company’s Africa Works program will potentially invest millions of dollars in its partnership with Birima. Like other successful microcredit systems—such as Grameen Bank, founded by 2006 Nobel Peace Prize winner Muhammad Yunus, and Kiva.org, which facilitates small loans online—Birima, which is named for a Senegalese king who was lionized for keeping his word, offers small (usually less than $200) loans to aspiring entrepreneurs (farmers, welders, artisans, even musicians) who have nothing. The loans require no collateral beyond the applicants’ word to pay them back and accrue little or no interest. Plus, Birima consults with each recipient about their business plans. |
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|