Mladá fronta Dnes carries and interivew with Michal Mička from the investment group C2H, who took an 80 percent stake in the Czech fashion brand Pietro Filipi last year. In a wide-ranging interview, Mička told the paper why the company has gotten into difficulties. He blamed “a high level of debt, a long-term decline in the number of visitors and poorly functioning on-line sales. The long-term trend in the number of visitors to shopping centers has been falling and it’s compensated by the growth of e-commerce,” said Mička. “Pietro Filipi didn’t reflect this trend. To put it simply, the company wasn’t being managed optimally. It was behind in everything: in its products, in production and in marketing.”
He said he invested in the company because it was attractive to enter a sector of the Czech Republic as a market leader and to help the company expand abroad. He believes that the true retail giants like Inditex aren’t able to react quickly to the new technologies and opportunities that are becoming possible, something he believes will be possible with Pietro Filipi. This includes ideas such as mirrors that can show customers what they’d look like in a piece of clothing, without having to go to a changing room to try it on.
