Why Jil Sander’s new CEO must turn creative renewal into commercial growth

Jil Sander has appointed luxury-industry veteran Marco Viganò as chief executive officer effective September 15, giving the OTB Group-owned fashion house permanent operating leadership as it attempts to translate a creative reset into stronger commercial performance during one of the more difficult periods for the global luxury sector.

Viganò will report directly to OTB Group Chief Executive Officer Ubaldo Minelli, who had been overseeing Jil Sander on an interim basis since former chief executive Serge Brunschwig stepped down in July 2025. The appointment therefore closes a leadership gap that lasted more than a year and places an executive with extensive commercial, operational and customer-development experience alongside Creative Director Simone Bellotti, who has been reshaping Jil Sander’s design identity since his appointment in 2025.

The timing is important because Jil Sander is operating inside a parent group whose overall sales have been under pressure. OTB Group reported 2025 turnover of €1.7 billion and net sales of approximately €1.6 billion, with net sales declining 5% at constant exchange rates. Wholesale revenue fell 14.7%, while the company continued shifting investment toward directly controlled retail, e-commerce, client relationships and selected international growth markets.

Viganò consequently inherits more than the task of running an established fashion house. He must help determine how Jil Sander converts creative credibility into profitable sales while OTB Group reduces its dependence on wholesale distribution, rationalises stores and competes for luxury consumers whose spending patterns have become increasingly selective.

Why did Jil Sander choose Marco Viganò as its new chief executive?

Viganò arrives with a career unusually concentrated on the commercial side of global luxury.

Immediately before joining Jil Sander, he served as Global Chief Client Officer and President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa at Moncler. His responsibilities there included client development and customer-experience strategy, capabilities that are becoming increasingly important as luxury companies try to generate more revenue from their highest-value customers rather than rely solely on broad store expansion.

His earlier positions broaden that experience considerably. Viganò served as Chief Commercial Officer at Swiss watchmaker Audemars Piguet and Chief Operating Officer at Saint Laurent, while previous roles included work at Louis Vuitton, Gucci and L’Oréal. His career has also spanned Europe, Asia, the Middle East and Russia, alongside earlier experience at McKinsey & Company.

That background suggests OTB Group wanted a chief executive capable of combining brand positioning with operational execution. Jil Sander already has a distinct aesthetic identity and a new creative direction. The harder challenge is ensuring that product, retail locations, pricing, digital distribution and customer engagement reinforce that identity commercially.

OTB Group has characterised Jil Sander as strategically important within its portfolio. The group has also indicated that Viganò’s international-market knowledge should support the brand’s development and strengthen its global positioning.

The appointment therefore appears designed to add commercial leadership around the creative platform that OTB has been building under Bellotti.

Why has Jil Sander gone through so much leadership change?

The September appointment follows a surprisingly short tenure for Viganò’s predecessor.

OTB Group named Serge Brunschwig chief executive of Jil Sander in February 2025 while simultaneously making him the group’s Chief Strategy Officer. Brunschwig brought substantial experience from LVMH, including leadership positions at Fendi, Dior Homme, Christian Dior Couture and Celine.

He stepped down in July 2025 after only around six months in the role. Ubaldo Minelli subsequently took direct interim responsibility for Jil Sander while OTB searched for a longer-term replacement. Reuters reported that Viganò will now report directly to Minelli.

The extended interim period matters because luxury houses often depend on close alignment between the chief executive and creative director. The creative leader determines much of the product and visual direction, while the chief executive has to build the commercial infrastructure capable of monetising that vision without weakening the brand.

Jil Sander experienced another major leadership transition on the creative side when Simone Bellotti was appointed creative director in 2025. Bellotti presented his first Spring/Summer 2026 ready-to-wear collection during Milan Fashion Week in September 2025 and subsequently developed the Fall/Winter 2026 pre-collection.

Viganò therefore becomes the permanent commercial counterpart to a relatively new creative leader. Creating stability between those two functions may be one of the most important organisational objectives for Jil Sander over the coming years.

What financial environment does Marco Viganò inherit at OTB Group?

OTB Group remains financially substantial, but its latest annual numbers show why management cannot rely on industry growth to lift every brand automatically.

The privately controlled Italian fashion group owns Diesel, Jil Sander, Maison Margiela, Marni and Viktor&Rolf, along with production and childrenswear businesses including Staff International and Brave Kid. It also holds an interest in Amiri.

For 2025, OTB reported turnover of €1.7 billion, down 4.8% at constant exchange rates, while net sales declined 5% to approximately €1.6 billion. EBITDA reached €237.3 million, equivalent to 15.1% of net sales, while EBIT was €10.1 million.

The weakness was not evenly distributed across the organisation. Maison Margiela increased sales 8.4%, while Diesel achieved its strongest profitability in a decade. OTB did not disclose a separate annual sales figure or growth rate for Jil Sander, meaning there is no reliable basis for attributing the group’s overall decline specifically to the brand.

What management did disclose was substantial weakness in wholesale. Revenue through that channel fell 14.7% at constant exchange rates during 2025, compared with a 2.6% decline across retail.

That difference is strategically important for Viganò.

Luxury brands historically depended heavily on department stores, multi-brand boutiques and other wholesale partners. Direct retail gives companies greater control over pricing, merchandising, customer information and brand presentation, but it also transfers more responsibility for store economics and inventory risk to the brand itself.

Jil Sander’s new chief executive is arriving precisely as OTB pushes further toward that model.

Why is OTB shifting toward direct-to-consumer luxury retail?

Direct channels, including retail stores, outlets and online operations, accounted for approximately 60% of OTB Group turnover in 2025. The company has been deliberately increasing that share to strengthen its direct relationship with consumers.

The transition is not simply a programme of opening more stores.

OTB spent approximately €64 million on investment during 2025 while simultaneously rationalising its retail network. Across the group, 49 stores opened, 58 closed and several others were relocated to locations management considered more strategic. OTB ended the year with approximately 600 directly operated stores.

That approach illustrates how luxury retail strategy is changing. The objective is increasingly to operate fewer weak locations while investing more aggressively in stores capable of delivering higher productivity, stronger customer relationships and a more distinctive brand experience.

Viganò’s recent focus on customer development at Moncler may fit particularly well with that strategy.

Luxury companies have become increasingly interested in sophisticated clienteling, where sales teams use customer data and personal relationships to serve high-spending consumers across multiple markets and channels. OTB said its innovation investment during 2025 included artificial intelligence solutions and clienteling technology.

For Jil Sander, the commercial opportunity is to pair those capabilities with a brand positioned around minimalist luxury rather than mass distribution.

Can Jil Sander’s Asia strategy become a bigger growth engine?

Asia-Pacific is already strategically important to OTB Group and Jil Sander.

During 2025, Jil Sander expanded its retail presence through new openings in China and Japan. At the wider group level, Japan represented approximately 27.4% of total business, making it one of OTB’s most important markets.

OTB also changed its Asia-Pacific governance structure by placing Korea under the coordination of its Japanese operation. Management said the objective was to transfer practices established in Japan into Korea, which it views as a market with further development potential.

The broader Asian picture remains complicated, however.

OTB said the Chinese market slowed during 2025, while Europe also weakened. That means expansion cannot be based simply on opening more physical locations across China in expectation that luxury consumption will recover uniformly.

Viganò’s international experience may become especially important in navigating those differences. Japan is a mature luxury market, Korea is highly influential in fashion and culture, while China remains enormous but more volatile than during the pre-pandemic luxury boom.

The Middle East represents another opportunity. OTB recorded 9% growth there during 2025 and has been expanding its joint venture with Chalhoub Group into Qatar and Kuwait. North America also grew 5.9%.

The geographic opportunity for Jil Sander therefore remains significant even while industry conditions are difficult. The challenge will be identifying the markets where additional investment produces enough productivity to justify the capital.

How important is Simone Bellotti to Marco Viganò’s strategy?

Creative Director Simone Bellotti is central to the commercial proposition Viganò now inherits.

OTB appointed Bellotti with the stated objective of further elevating Jil Sander’s positioning. His arrival formed part of a broader creative transformation across the group that also brought Glenn Martens to Maison Margiela and Meryll Rogge to Marni.

Jil Sander has also been developing categories and partnerships beyond its core ready-to-wear collections. During 2025, the brand launched its first fragrance range with Coty under the Olfactory Series 1 name and revived its historical collaboration with Puma, reconnecting the fashion house with a luxury-sports relationship originally established in 1998.

Those initiatives create additional commercial levers for Viganò.

Fragrance can broaden customer access to a luxury brand because the price point is considerably below ready-to-wear fashion. Collaborations can generate cultural visibility and attract consumers who may not otherwise enter the brand’s ecosystem.

The risk is dilution. Jil Sander’s commercial strategy has to expand without making the brand so widely distributed or partnership-driven that its distinctive positioning becomes less clear.

This is where CEO and creative-director alignment becomes critical. Bellotti needs the freedom to establish a coherent creative language, while Viganò must determine how that language translates into products, markets, categories and customer relationships capable of producing profitable growth.

What does OTB’s wider brand portfolio tell us about Jil Sander’s opportunity?

OTB’s experience with Maison Margiela and Diesel provides useful internal evidence that brand repositioning can generate financial results, although the strategies are not directly transferable.

Maison Margiela increased sales 8.4% during 2025 and was OTB Group’s strongest-growing brand. Diesel, meanwhile, recorded its best profitability in ten years following substantial investment in repositioning.

Those results matter because they show OTB is willing to tolerate multi-year investment when management believes a brand has strategic value.

Jil Sander has been described by OTB as strategic, and the parent company continued investing in its retail footprint in China and Japan despite broader luxury-market weakness.

Viganò now has to determine whether similar patience can produce stronger commercial momentum at Jil Sander.

The challenge is that every brand requires a different growth formula. Diesel operates at a different price architecture and cultural position, while Maison Margiela has its own avant-garde identity and customer base. Jil Sander’s minimalist heritage gives it strong recognition, but translating that into scale without undermining exclusivity requires careful execution.

Is there a Jil Sander share-price reaction to Marco Viganò’s appointment?

There is no directly relevant share-price movement because Jil Sander and parent OTB Group are privately held.

That distinction is important when evaluating the leadership transition. Unlike publicly listed luxury groups such as LVMH, Kering or Moncler, OTB does not receive an immediate stock-market verdict every time it changes leadership or creative direction.

The absence of a quoted share price can allow management more time to rebuild a brand without reacting to daily market volatility. It also means external observers have less brand-level financial information because OTB does not publish the detailed segment disclosures required from publicly traded companies.

That makes operating indicators more important.

Future store openings and closures, geographic expansion, product launches, management appointments and any brand-specific performance data disclosed by OTB will help indicate whether Viganò’s strategy is gaining traction.

The next set of OTB annual results should also show whether the group’s shift toward direct retail is stabilising the decline in net sales and whether performance is becoming more evenly distributed across the portfolio.

What should employees and the luxury industry watch under Marco Viganò?

The first priority is organisational stability.

Jil Sander has moved through multiple executive and creative transitions over a relatively short period. With Bellotti established creatively and Viganò now permanently installed as CEO, the brand has an opportunity to maintain a consistent leadership structure long enough for its strategy to mature.

There is currently no announced Jil Sander workforce-reduction programme connected to Viganò’s appointment. The leadership change should therefore not be interpreted as evidence of imminent layoffs without additional information.

The more relevant workforce question concerns capabilities.

OTB’s shift toward direct retail, customer data, clienteling and artificial intelligence can change the mix of skills required throughout its brands. Commercial organisations may increasingly value employees capable of managing high-value customer relationships, digital channels and integrated regional operations alongside traditional wholesale expertise.

The group is also actively rationalising its store portfolio. Across OTB, 58 stores were closed in 2025 while 49 opened, indicating that geographic employment can shift even as investment continues.

For Viganò, this produces a delicate mandate.

He takes over a globally recognised brand with an established creative heritage, an increasingly coherent new design direction and a parent company that remains profitable and financially capable of investing. Yet he also enters as OTB sales have declined, wholesale distribution is contracting and luxury consumers have become more selective.

His career suggests the answer will revolve heavily around customers.

At Moncler, Viganò’s responsibilities centred on client development and experience. At Audemars Piguet, Saint Laurent and other luxury companies, he operated at the intersection of commercial execution and brand desirability.

Jil Sander now needs those disciplines simultaneously.

Simone Bellotti can continue defining what the brand looks like. Marco Viganò’s larger test is determining who buys it, where they buy it, how Jil Sander builds relationships with those customers and whether those decisions can turn creative renewal into sustainable commercial growth.

That makes the September 15 appointment considerably more than another executive move in luxury fashion. After more than a year of interim management, Jil Sander once again has a permanent chief executive. The next stage will show whether leadership stability can finally provide the commercial counterpart to the brand’s creative transformation.