Grow Your Business

Everybody loves a good story. It’s the same with business: if you don’t tell a good story about your brand, people may just forget about it.

That’s what happened in the Philippines to Ellesse (pronounced “el-ess”), a half-century-old Italian sportswear brand that made waves locally in the early 1980s with its stylish but practical line of tennis clothing.

Sending the message that it was possible to succeed with style, tennis greats Chris Evert, Boris Becker, Guillermo Vilas—and even boxer Muhammad Ali—were among the top endorsers of thebrand founded by tailor Leonardo Servadio in Perugia, Italy in 1959.

Ellesse’s popularity waned as other sportswear brands became prominent, but now it’s making a comeback. With the help of its Philippines-based partner Primer Group, the brand (now ownedby Britain’s Pentland Group) will put up nine stores across the country in 2012, and more throughout Southeast Asia.

So how is the Italian brand retelling its story to a new generation of Filipinos? Ellesse global managing director Mike Stopworth, who recently visited Manila, tells Entrepreneur Philippines just how:

1. Put up flagship stores.

Flagship stores—defined as a retailer’s primary location, a retail chain’s first outlet, a store in a prominent location (like a mall), or the store that holds the highest volume of merchandise—“are the best way to tell your brand story,” says Stopworth.“It’s the best tool for educating people and consumers about your brand, and obviously our brand is ‘new’ here.

It’s a 50-year-old brand but is new to Southeast Asia,” adds the 31-year-old manager, who became a fan of Ellesse growing up in Liverpool, England.

In Ellesse’s case, it tapped Primer Group—a retailing and distribution firm managing over 50 premium brands, 100 freestanding concept stores and 600 “consignment doors” across Southeast Asia—to build up its brand in the Philippines and the region.

Stopworth explains: “Rather than break it down per country, we wanted to find a partner capable of managing essentially for Southeast Asia. With that you get efficiency, you get an even spread across the region.

“The Primer Group completely fit our criteria for a partner: professional, friendly, honest, (with) integrity,” he adds. “They have a great mix of brands that we very much complement. Due to their location and base here, we thought the Philippines is the best place to start.”

3. Communicate a compelling story.

Other Italian sportswear brands exist in the Philippine market, but Stopworth says Ellesse is different because of its “execution of products.”

“We want to be the world’s most stylish sportswear brand, very much focused on quality and execution, be it our marketing communication or our product quality itself,” he says. “For our brand, it’s the sexiness, the style, the sophistication. The Italian brands are ‘yes, we want to win, but we want to look good while we do it, we want to feel comfortable while we do it.’”

Part of telling this story is correcting what people already know about the brand, adds Leslie Santos, assistant vice president for regional brand management of Primer Group. In other parts of Southeast Asia, “Ellesse is known as a watch brand” and it’s Primer’s job “to help change that,” she says. While Filipinos may have forgotten Ellesse for a while, Stopforth says it’s because “all brands have cycles.”

“When Pentland bought it, we salvaged what we could with the brand, stripped it back down, consolidated it, gave it a new approach and focus, and put it back up again,” he adds. “We’re back here now because we’re in a good enough position to be back here.” And back for good with a great story, Ellesse hopes.