La Martina Caso de Estudio Polo
IMD374
INTERNATIONAL
v. 09.03.2009
LA MARTINA (A): “PASÍON ARGENTINA”
Professor Benoît Leleux, S. Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, and Prof. Dominique Turpin, Dentsu Professor of Marketing and Strategy, prepared this case with the assistance of Thomas Brochier, IMD MBA 2007, as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a business situation.
FEBRUARY 2008. Lando Simonetti was enjoying the relative cool of his Cucha Cucha office in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It may have been cool, but definitely not quiet. His desire to always be in the middle of the action at the company also meant he had to live through the noise of the factory. The hustle and bustle was something he always relished; it reminded him of the crowd encouragements on the polo pitch, the small nuisance that made it all worth it, the voice of passion and action. No, definitely, he did not want a quiet office. He needed to feel the excitement around him, the people. This ability to stay in close contact with people and realities on the ground had been instrumental in building La Martina from a modest polo equipment provider to the premier polo brand in the world, with global sales in excess of US$200 million. La Martina was not about polo: it was polo. Distributors had progressively turned the brand into a lifestyle name, the hippest, hottest, and one of the most expensive brands on display at Pitti Uomo, the leading menswear Italian trade show. As an Argentinean of Italian origin, Lando could not have felt prouder to have conquered Europe. Through an affiliated company, Polo Management Group (PMG), he had organized and hosted the best Polo events around the globe, and had propagated the influence of the sport into the most improbable territories, from Russia to China. Soon, he would be organizing the 8th World Polo Championships in Mexico, sponsored by ESPN, the American Sports network. All teams would
INTERNATIONAL
v. 09.03.2009
LA MARTINA (A): “PASÍON ARGENTINA”
Professor Benoît Leleux, S. Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance, and Prof. Dominique Turpin, Dentsu Professor of Marketing and Strategy, prepared this case with the assistance of Thomas Brochier, IMD MBA 2007, as a basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a business situation.
FEBRUARY 2008. Lando Simonetti was enjoying the relative cool of his Cucha Cucha office in the suburbs of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It may have been cool, but definitely not quiet. His desire to always be in the middle of the action at the company also meant he had to live through the noise of the factory. The hustle and bustle was something he always relished; it reminded him of the crowd encouragements on the polo pitch, the small nuisance that made it all worth it, the voice of passion and action. No, definitely, he did not want a quiet office. He needed to feel the excitement around him, the people. This ability to stay in close contact with people and realities on the ground had been instrumental in building La Martina from a modest polo equipment provider to the premier polo brand in the world, with global sales in excess of US$200 million. La Martina was not about polo: it was polo. Distributors had progressively turned the brand into a lifestyle name, the hippest, hottest, and one of the most expensive brands on display at Pitti Uomo, the leading menswear Italian trade show. As an Argentinean of Italian origin, Lando could not have felt prouder to have conquered Europe. Through an affiliated company, Polo Management Group (PMG), he had organized and hosted the best Polo events around the globe, and had propagated the influence of the sport into the most improbable territories, from Russia to China. Soon, he would be organizing the 8th World Polo Championships in Mexico, sponsored by ESPN, the American Sports network. All teams would