BasicNet’s first 100 years are an epic story of captains courageous: a century of challenges and battles that started with a love story.

Abramo Vitale, the son of a jewish cloth merchant, fell in love with a catholic woman. His father Davide told him to choose between marriage and the family company. Abramo followed his heart: he accepted a severance package and married. On November 12^th, 1916 he established Società Anonima “Calzificio Torinese”. For the first time – on Thursday 16^th – the doors of its headquarters were opened. A farmhouse just outside Torino. It produced sock for the Italian Royal Army. The business took off.

The passion for business of Abramo’s nephew Davide brought him to produce also underwear. The Army still was the main customers.  With the beginning of WW2 production increased. But on July 13^th, 1943 Allied Forces bombed the factory, destroying it completely.

On the ruins of the old factory Davide Vitale opened new, state-of-the-art headquarters with a factory and office building. The company started to target the mass consumer market.

A faulty stock of socks was distributed to retailers. Customers returned the goods. Davide Vitale labelled the new packages with the caption Kontroll, German-style, and a K printed as a stamp. It worked. Everyone wanted “the socks with the K”, so a new brand was born thanks to a mistake.

Maurizio Vitale, Davide’s second child, took his father’s place at the age of 23. Davide had died and the family business was not doing well. Thousands of t-shirts were lying unsold in warehouses. One day in Paris he saw John Lennon on TV. He was wearing the army shirt of a Vietnam casualty. He returned to Torino and had the unsold t-shirts dyed green and military rank insignia sewn on them. He flooded the market. The company was saved. Company President Giuseppe Lattes asked him one day: “What are we going to call these robe?” meaning “stuff” in English. Vitale answered: “Sir! Call them what you like. Call them Robe di Kappa”, that is “Kappa’s stuff”.

Three years later Maurizio was in New York with his friend Oliviero Toscani, a young photographer. They walked through Central Park, full of young people wearing blue jeans. “We should manufacture them in Italy too” they said. And they immediately look for a name. On Broadway a poster bill was advertising “Jesus Christ Superstar”, the musical. Toscani said: “Let’s call the new jeans Jesus: it’s a good name and a lot of people already know it!”.

On Christmas Marco Boglione was in Sestrière. He met Maurizio Vitale on the ski slopes, who asked him: “What do you want to be when you grow up?”. He replied: “A photographer”. “And what do you do now?”. Boglione said: “I’m studying Engineering”. And Maurizio: “Are you stupid?”. So Vitale pulled him out of university and gave him a job at Maglificio Calzificio Torinese. At just 25 years old Marco Boglione was sales and marketing director. As a sports enthusiast he understood that it would be a future trend. He convinced Maurizio Vitale to open the Company sports department with the name “Robe di Kappa Sport”, later simplified in “Kappa Sport” and finally “Kappa”. Kappa sponsored the Juventus. It was a success. In 1980 it was the turn of the US Track and Field team: Los Angeles Olympic Games in 1984 and Seul in 1988. But by then Maurizio Vitale was no longer there. He died in 1987. Despite a brave fight by his brother Edoardo, seven years later the company filed for bankruptcy.

On October 28^th, 1994 Marco Boglione – who in the meantime had started working for himself – purchased at an auction Maglificio Calzificio Torinese’s brands and factory, and renamed it BasicNet. Boglione was an entrepreneur who had an intuition about Internet. He created a new business model: a network of independent entrepreneurs connected to each other and to the head office through Internet. The first marketplace in the clothes business was born.

Kappa, Robe di Kappa and Jesus Jeans were relaunched. Three years later BasicNet was listed on the Italian stock exchange. The Kombat, Kappa revolutionary soccer shirt, was worn by the Italian team at the 2002 World Cup, forever changing soccer outfits. In 2004 BasicNet purchased the K-Way brand, and in 2007 Superga.

Other brands were added to its portfolio.  Today the BasicNet’s Group brands collections are available all over the world with combined retail sales exceeding 1 billion dollars. But the story, made of love and business challenges, carries on.  And the keywords for the next 100 years is: Keep on Kombat!