Giorgio Armani

Giorgio Armani

An entrepreneur is someone who organizes, operates, and assumes the risk for a business venture. Giorgio Armani is a perfect example of a modern entrepreneur, who became very successful in the fashion industry. Armani is estimated to be worth around 2 Billion (US) dollars.

Giorgio Armani was born on July 11, 1932 in Piacenza in the Emilia region of Italy. He also spent most of his childhood in Piacenza but he did not have a very happy childhood, Piacenza took heavy bombing during the time of a war, which Giorgio was very small and lost two of his best friends when a bomb exploded. He and his sister Rosanna Armani who was three years old at the time were nearly gunned down. Armani Parents would wake Giorgio and Rosanna in the very early hours of the morning and would take them to a shelter where they would be safe from the planes dropping bombs.

After the war had ended Giorgio and his family left the little provincial town of Piacenza and went to the City of Milan. This was very hard for Giorgio's family they lived in a very poor part of Milan and his parents struggled to rebuild a decent life.

Giorgio then went to university and studied medicine; he wanted to dedicate his life to helping others. After just two years of studying medicine he had to go to the military service, which Armani was very happy to do because he was not sure which way to take his studies and this was the perfect excuse for him to take a very much needed break?

Since Giorgio had been studying medicine he was put in the infirmary, which was very boring for him. He spent most of his time painting. Giorgio shortly became very busy when a flu epidemic that broke out and his infirmary filled with sixty patients. A short time later he took a brake from the military and asked to go and work in Milan.

When he arrived in Milan to work one of his friends told him there was a job opening at La Rinascente in the advertising department and that is when Giorgio got his first big break in fashion.

He then left La Rinascente and joined Nino Currati as a designer from 1961 to 1970, and then with encouragement from his close friend Sergio Galeotti he left Nino Currati to start his own fashion company.

Many people thought that Giorgio was crazy to try and start a fashion business because he would be faced with huge and very tuff competitors such as Valintino, Gucci, and also Prada. Many people thought that Valintino would crush Armani after his first line of clothing was released. But that did not happened and the Armani company begun to grow. His sister Rosanna Armani teamed up with Armani as head of communications activities of the company.

The Armani Brands became almost an instant success in the United States due to Armani's relaxed designs and his sophisticated, unstructured jackets and suits for women.

Armani's company did very well! Sales were 787 Million dollars (US) in 1994 he was up 12.4 percent from 1993. Garments accounted for about 527 Million dollars (US) of sales