Salvatore Ferragamo appointed Yigit Turhan as Chief Brand Officer, pulling him from Valentino where he spent three years as Chief Marketing Officer. The move arrives sixteen months into creative director Maximilian Davis's tenure and places brand architecture directly under a veteran who navigated Valentino's $1.47 billion annual revenue communications engine.
Turhan joins as Ferragamo executes a repositioning Davis articulated in October 2023 around "disciplined luxury" and tighter SKU discipline. The house reported €1.03 billion in 2023 revenue, down 8.3 percent year-on-year, with Asia-Pacific exposure at 42 percent of total sales making brand messaging precision non-negotiable. Turhan's Valentino work included the Anatomy of Couture campaign and the repositioning around Pierpaolo Piccioli's final collections before his March 2024 departure. He managed a marketing budget estimated near €140 million annually, triple Ferragamo's recent spend levels.
The appointment signals Ferragamo's recognition that creative direction alone cannot close the gap with Kering and LVMH stablemates outpacing it in direct-to-consumer conversion and Asia recapture. Turhan inherits a brand with 406 directly operated stores but a digital-first consumer expecting the storytelling velocity Valentino achieved under his oversight. Ferragamo's Q3 2024 results showed mainland China sales down 11 percent, a deceleration worse than sector averages, making brand heat a revenue-defense variable.
Worth noting: Turhan worked at Burberry before Valentino, overlapping with the Daniel Lee hiring cycle and the operational doctrine around high-frequency product storytelling. Ferragamo has not disclosed reporting structure, but the Chief Brand Officer title historically sits parallel to or above Chief Marketing Officer in houses prioritizing narrative over media buying. The company's advertising spend as a percentage of revenue sat near 7.1 percent in 2023, below the 9-12 percent Kering brands deploy.
Operators should watch Ferragamo's FY 2024 earnings call in March for marketing-budget guidance and any mention of agency consolidation or in-house studio expansion. Turhan's first campaign work will likely surface in late Q2 2025 around pre-fall product, giving a six-month window to assess whether Ferragamo increases media weight or reallocates toward content production. Allocators tracking European luxury repositioning plays will want comp-store-sales inflection data by Q3 2025, particularly in China where brand-level awareness remains 23 percentage points below Prada and Miu Miu combined.
Ferragamo closed Thursday at €8.47 per share, up 1.9 percent on the announcement, giving it a market cap near €1.43 billion—roughly half its 2021 peak. The company has not hired a Chief Brand Officer since restructuring the role in 2019, making Turhan the first external executive at this level in five years.