Prada Base Case

Headquarters: Via Andrea Maffei 2, 20135 Milan, Italy

Phone number: 011-39-0254-6701 (from U.S., direct)

Business: Prada designs and sells high-end men's and women's apparel, shoes and accessories. Prada operates about 300 stores worldwide and either owns outright or has a majority interest in fashion houses Church's & Co., Helmut Lang and Jil Sander

Chief Information Officer: Fulvio Grignani

Financials in 2001: Sales, $1.46 billion; earnings before interest and taxes, $119.3 million; net profit, $28.6 million

Challenges: To reinvigorate the Prada brand name; capture market share and "mind-share" in luxury goods retailing; collect better information about customers; improve store results

BASELINE GOALS:

• Perfect new retail concept, known as Epicenter plan. Open Epicenter stores in New York, Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Tokyo
• Improve Prada brand sales, from 2% growth rate in 2001
• Increase Prada directly owned store sales, which dropped 6% in 2001 to $728.4 million
• Reduce debt, from $1.2 billion at the end of 2001