In 1946, at the age of only 11, Luciano Benetton was already the head of the family. He used to get up early before school and cycle to nearby Treviso station to sell newspapers. On cold Veneto mornings, when the temperature could be as low as minus 10C, he kept his hands warms thanks to a pair of rabbit fur handlebar covers that had been made for him by his late father, who had died a year earlier.
In the afternoons, after school, he would deliver bread, sell soap door-to-door and then queue for the family's rations of salt, fish and bread before cycling home to help his mother with household duties which often included scrubbing his younger brother Gilberto's nappies. His sister, Giuliana, who made all the family's clothes, was equally industrious in her after-school hours, working a knitting machine in a neighbour's tiny workshop despite being well below the legal age.
In 1999, the Benettons - Luciano, Giuliana, Gilberto and Carlo - control one of the world's biggest and most famous knitwear companies, one with sales of $2.3 billion from its 8,000 shops in 120 countries worldwide (1998 figures). By the mid-1990s, the Benetton's family holding company, Edizione, owned 130 companies worldwide - including supermarkets, sportswear, olive oil and coffee producers, and many more - with aggregate sales of $6.4 billion.
By the mid-1990s, the Benetton family that had staved off starvation in post-war Veneto partly by selling off tiny plots of inherited land, owned around 2.4 million acres of ranch and farm land in Texas and Patagonia, Argentina. The family that had once benefited from subsidised yarns of cotton and wool sent to Italy under the terms of the post-war Marshall Plan (European Recovery Program) was now the world's largest consumer of wool with its own herd of some 280,000 sheep. By the mid-1990s, the family also ran its own World Championship-winning, Formula One motor racing team.
A new book, Benetton, The Family, the Business and the Brand, is nothing if not your original rags-to-riches story. It tells the story not just of the Benetton rise and rise but also, by implication and social context, of the post-war Italian economic miracle.
The Benetton family is, by any standards, remarkably talented and phenomenally hard working. However, it is at least arguable that they are merely one of the more flamboyantly successful expressions of the diligence, industry and commercial nous of the post-war generation of Italians. This was a generation that grew up in a country not only trying to put itself together following the destruction of warfare but also trying timidly to reclaim its rightful place among civilised nations after the misery and shame of Mussolini's fascism and his ill-fated alliance with Hitler.
The Benetton story has been told many times before but, one presumes, never in this detail nor with this (sometimes too reverential) sense of history. It is a story well worth re-telling. In the mid-1950s, friends of "shop assistant" Luciano Benetton had admired a bright yellow jumper knitted for him by his sister Giuliana. This gave Luciano an idea. A generation that had been starved of colour and fun during the war might be ready for something bold and bright. Luciano sold his accordion, Gilberto sold his bicycle, money was saved and borrowed and off they went to a trade fair at Milan to buy Giuliana her first, state-of-the-art knitting machine. The book goes on to tell how the company became a world leader not just in textiles but also in advertising, [N O]and communication via through the immensely effective United Colors of Benetton campaigns, created and projected by the controversial talent of photographer Oliviero Toscani.
Millions around the world have been amused, annoyed, distracted or infuriated by the United Colors of Benetton campaign images: a blood-stained newborn baby; a man dying of AIDS; the bullet-torn and blood-stained clothes of a Bosnian war victim; a priest kissing a nun; a white baby suckling at a black breast; multi-coloured condoms floating through the air. These and thousands of other pictures have been used by photographer Toscani to create what Luciano Benetton likes to call "a global image".
The United Colors campaign has prompted protests from a variety of pressure groups ranging from gay-rights activists to the Catholic Church. The campaigns have also prompted litigation between Benetton and German retailers who tried to argue, unsuccessfully, that the campaign had damaged sales.
And, indeed, there's the rub. While commentators have spent much time pondering whether the United Colors campaign has been prompted by humanitarian or commercial considerations, the bottom line has always been that it makes sound business sense. As Luciano Benetton candidly admitted to Reuters reporter Richard Waddington in February 1992: "Certainly, the idea is to make yourself noticed . . ."
Business is business, even if that means ignoring the call of Nobel peace prize winner Aung San Suu Kyi for economic sanctions on the military government of Myanmar (Burma). Asked about the apparent contradiction between the company's multi-racial, egalitarian, humanistic image and the idea of doing business with a repressive dictatorship, Luciano Benetton says: "[An economic boycott] would be impossible . . . Our relationship is with a local businessman who wants to do business with us and import our products. It is independent of everything else."
For all that it reads like the official, not overly-critical biography, this book contains much food for thought, be the reader's interests sociological, economic, commercial, historical or even sporting. We are introduced to the innovative Benetton franchising system (Benetton keep creative control, but the retailer is financially autonomous); the company's sensitive monitoring of its market via worldwide computerised stock control; the in-house joke of "first we sell the clothes, then we make them"; the kidnapping attempts on Luciano Benetton in 1982; the break-up of his marriage; and the link between alleged dirty tricks by Benetton's own Formula One team and the death of Brazilian driver Ayrton Senna in 1994. All in all, a fascinating story.
Benetton - the Family, the Business and the Brand by Jonathon Mantle is published by Little Brown, £17.99 in UK