This year Ermenegildo Zegna celebrates its Centennial. The Zegna story is an extraordinary one, and not the least of its success is due to the quiet, calm, sophisticated and disarmingly charming influence and dedication of founder Michelangelo Zegna’s great grandson Paolo Zegna.

Paolo in his discreet and modest manner never mentions his full title, Count Paolo Zegna di Monterubello and in spite of his quiet aristocratic bearing gets on with the job with focused energy as Paolo Zegna.

President of the global Ermenegildo Zegna Group and working within a predominantly family environment, Paolo has visited Australia many times strengthening the relationship between the super fine wool industry and the luxury clothing giant.

Almost single handedly Ermenegildo Zegna has raised the profile of extrafine Merino wool world wide. Paolo’s grandfather Ermenegildo Zegna who founded his wool mill in 1910 in Trivero, a small town in the Biella Alps, would justifiably be proud of him.

TC  Firstly, Paolo, do you like using your full title Count Paolo Zegna di Monterubello or do you prefer just Paolo Zegna? I noticed in the newspapers when you used to visit Australia for the extrafine wool awards that the press always referred to you by your full title.

PZ  I have much respect for the family title which was given to my randfather, but I’d rather prefer to be called in a less formal way. TC  When did you first join the company and at that stage of your life what had you already done? Of course you had completed school, university etc. Could you give me some details about your early years before and after you joined the company? Was it naturally expected that you should join the company and did you feel confident and happy about this?

PZ  I entered the Zegna Company when I was around 25 years old. Before then I completed my high school studies in Italy, university in Switzerland – Geneva, a bank experience in London and the compulsory military service with the Alpine Troops in the Italian Alps.

When I joined the Company, I spent the first 4 months of my working life in Australia: within the Australian Wool Corporation, with several woolgrowers in various parts of your country, at wool auctions and, together with the then Director of the Zegna Company based in Australia, my great friend Sidney Sinclair. With him I visited most of the Zegna major accounts and customers in Australia. If you remember, Tim, this was when we met each other for the first time: we have known each other now for almost 30 years!

TC  You have indeed enjoyed a long standing and very good relationship with Australia, particularly through your successful history of promoting extrafine wool from Australia to the world. How do you remember all those visits to the sheep stations, the cities for the awards, meeting farmers and business people?

PZ   Australia holds an important place in me and in the Company: we buy most of our superfine merino wool (the best in the world) from Australia; we have been associated with the Australian Wool Growers Association for a very long time; we have a distribution company based in Sydney and directly operate shops in Melbourne, Sydney and Auckland (New Zealand). Ermenegildo Zegna was the first one in the late fifties – early sixties which started to promote not just ‘wool in general’ but ‘superfine wool from Australia’.

The same we did later on with the ‘South African Kid Mohair’ or the ‘finest cashmere from Inner Mongolia’. Our customers do not just want from Zegna ‘the best of the best’, but are also interested in where these magnificent fibres are coming from. This is one of the reasons why for so many years we have always devoted a lot of attention and investments in the development of the relationship with the growers of the fibres in Australia, in China, in South Africa and in Peru. Through the institution of our Trophies, we have incentivised them to continuously improve the quality of their animals and, at the same time, we have constantly invested to let our international customers understand the exceptional qualities of these beautiful natural fibres. The Ermenegildo Zegna Trophies (the first one was established in Australia in 1967) are still a milestone of the highest quality of the best natural fibres.

TC  Do you attribute the growth and success of the Zegna ‘empire’ to the close involvement of several family members?

Gildo, Anna and Paolo take a bow after the Zegna runway fashion show in Milan in January 2010

PZ  Entering the Company was a natural thing for me and my cousin Gildo, the present CEO of the Zegna Company. We loved what our grandfather had started and what our fathers had developed moving from the stage of one of the top weaver in the world – and certainly the best known – into an international apparel company.

Then, when Gildo, Anna, – my other cousin – and I joined, we have worked to make the Company become one of the leading international brands in menswear, with a very strong presence in more than 80 countries in the world, with more than 500 Ermenegildo Zegna monobrand shops (owned or franchised) and a few hundreds of independent top retailers like, for example, Henry Bucks in Australia.

What I liked, and still do, about Zegna is the “open mind”, the love to discover new things (like new markets, new products, new services to our customers); the love of the highest quality from the natural fibres we use (superfine wool from Australia, cashmere from Mongolia, vicuna from Peru, etc.) to the love of our design and making of the garments; from the quality of the relationship of our workers and the territory we live and work in, to the relationship with our final customers. And above all, the fact that all these elements are important today as  much as they were in my grandfather’s mind when he created the Company in 1910.

TC  How do you combine your intense focus and dedication to the Zegna company with your private life and outside family relationships?

PZ  I have always tried to create good, solid, when necessary professional but at the same time spontaneous relationships within the family, but also with friends around the world; in the Company with our associates or with our customers, and  the many people I had the chance to meet during my numerous trips all around the world, particularly in Asia.

Travelling has always been a thing I loved whether it was for business or pleasure  and in some years, almost 50% of my time was devoted to that. I was married for 14 years and I have 2 wonderful daughters (now 19 and 15 years old) and now I have a wonderful new partner from Australia whom I have known for 35 years.

TC  The Zegna family owns and controls the company. How do you share the responsibilities between executive family members and have you appointed non- executive non-family members to the board?

PZ  Since 2006, my cousin Gildo has been the ‘sole’ CEO of the Group: before then we had shared the position as ‘Co – CEOs’, splitting areas of responsibilities and markets. Now, as normal in a company of our size, we have differentiated our roles and positions and I have been appointed President of the Group. My uncle Angelo Zegna, Gildo’s father, still sits on the Board of Directors and is Honorary Chairman of the Group. On the Zegna Board also sit my sister Renata and 3 external members who have been at our side now for many years: thanks to their experience in other fields, in other companies, in other markets, their contribution has been of great value for the development and evolution of our activity.

Paolo holding a protected Vicuna during a recent trip to Peru where he inaugurated the Fondazione Zegna hydraton project initiated by Zegna to improve the supply of water to the local communities and livestock

TC   How have the philosophy, cultural direction and values of your great grandfather and grandfather been maintained during this extraordinary expansion when surely the family must lose some of its ‘hands-on’ day to day involvement in the business? PZ  Ermenegildo Zegna is still today a family company: one that has achieved a significant size (more than €850 million  turnover in 2008, 7000 employees, more than 500 monobrand shops), run by family members with a very strong team of managers. The good thing is, I believe, that most of the managers and the people working for Zegna feel they are somehow part of the family and enjoy their job with us.

This is the result of the great involvement we, as family members, have in the daily life of the Company: our regular involvement in all the phases of the activity, from the creation to the development of the products; from their production and quality inspection to their final sales in the shops.

TC  Are you anxious that the next generation of the Zegna family should come into the business? Do you believe they will be capable of managing such a massive global business and that they will bring with them the same family values?

PZ  In the next few years we may have some members of the next generation joining the Company. There are 11 of them, aged from 31 to 15 years. Some of them are still studying; some are already working outside the Company, building up their strengths, their experiences, their capacity to move in autonomy.  We are of course keeping an eye on them in order to see “who and when” may be ready to join us in the Company. Not one of them pretends to have a secure seat in Zegna, even though, I am sure, they are all trying their best to grow up solidly and, maybe, one day to join us.

We have set precise rules for them to respect – that’s normal – but in our hearts we hope some of them one day will like us, have the capacity to continue the tradition of the family in the Company. They naturally share the same values the generations before them had: honesty, team spirit, hard work, discipline, capability to move around the world within different cultures and habits with flexibility and curiosity to always learn something from the others.