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We talk to SLAM CEO Enrico Chieffi about how their partnership with Emirates Team New Zealand helps make better products for sailors
Enrico Chieffi, CEO of Italian sailing clothes brand SLAM, and Grant Dalton, CEO of Emirates Team New Zealand, have a relationship that goes way back. Both of them have a long track record as world class sailors and managers. Through decades they have been both rivals and friends. Now they have a joint project: developing the best possible sailing clothes in a partnership that puts ENTZ in a better position to win their fifth America’s Cup title, and SLAMin a position where they can benefit fromthe feedback of the world’s best sailors. Even before the deal, Dalton had
noticed something happening to SLAM since Chieffi took over two years ago. ‘SLAMhas demonstrated its clear, positive strategy in working towards becoming one of the world's best high-performance sailing clothing brands’, says Dalton, ‘and all of us at Emirates TeamNew Zealand look forward to working alongside themon thatmission.We are a team of over 100 people across a diverse range of vital roles fromengineering to boatbuilding to sailing and every single one of us is equally important andmust work together if we are to win the America’s Cup. This philosophy extends to all our
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partners, and SLAMhas already demonstrated its commitment to building quality apparel.’ Chieffi is a former world champion
in the 470 and Star classes, a double Olympic sailor and held the vital role of tactician on Italy's America's Cup challenger Il Moro di Venezia in 1992. After his career in the sport, he went on to be a business leader. After a period as MD of Nautor Swan in Finland, Chieffi moved back to Italy in 2021, into a position as CEO and shareholder of SLAM. This meant a complete reorganisation and a quite radical five-year plan. ‘SLAM is a very well-known brand’,
says Chieffi, ‘but before we took over, the company had moved in a more lifestyle oriented direction. And this project failed. So, the new plan was very simple: Move back to what the company was originally – a company made for sailors. I like to say that we are a brand new company with a 40 year history. The first thing we did was to cut drastically down on the number of items we were selling. We wanted to concentrate on the core of the brand, which is clothing for sailors. So, what is needed to go sailing? We started by reducing the number of items from 600 to 125. To have so many products is very
Above: SLAM has designed complete systems of technical clothing for every single role within the Emirates Team New Zealand organisation, not just for the sailors
inefficient and not very sustainable. The first point of sustainability is not to produce what is not needed. At the same time, we have increased the use of recycled materials. ‘The next step was to restructure
and organise SLAM assets to start the repositioning to become the best sailing technical brand – SLAM had very good products for the price but was not known to be among the top premium brands. We have kept that position for our core business, but introduced a top-quality pro line, that had not existed in the past. This was to position ourselves among the very best players in the world. We know this is a small niche market, but we also think it’s crucial to be credible at a certain level. And the partnership with ETNZ is the first example of what this has led to. They did not choose us for the money, we are a small company. They could choose any company in the world but they chose us because they were very positively surprised by the quality of the new collection. I can testify to that myself. Since we took over I have personally tested every single garment, especially the pro line. It’s very simple, use it and you know if it works or not. ‘Now, in partnership with ETNZ we
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