Kering has moved its education initiative into its operational phase, opening the Milan headquarters of the Kering Accademia per le Eccellenze (KApE) on Wednesday with more than 1,500 students enrolled across 40 programs spanning six Italian regions.

The campus sits at MIND, the innovation district built on the former Expo 2015 site in Milan, but it functions as the hub of a distributed network rather than a single school. The ecosystem links Kering's in-house brand academies — including those run by Bottega Veneta, Brioni, Gucci, Pomellato and Kering Eyewear — with seven partner institutions: ACOF, AFOL, Galdus, HModa Academy, ITS Cosmo, Istituto Modartech and MITA.

The group unveiled the project last spring. CEO Luca de Meo said the plan moved from an initial conversation in November to launch in under a year.

The commercial logic is explicit: 85 percent of Kering's production sits in Italy, and the academy's stated mission is to secure a pipeline of skilled artisans for the group's supplier base. "The second objective is to bolster the excellence of Italian craftsmanship and of its manufacturing companies by providing them with a highly skilled workforce," said Sabina Belli, newly appointed Kering Italia president and head of KApE, at the launch.

De Meo framed the investment as a scale play in a fragmented industrial base. "Italy is a country characterized by a multitude of small, fragmented, yet exceptional entities. I believe the challenge is to reach the necessary scale to create an ecosystem that can truly be a global benchmark…because when you have to go up against powerful American or Chinese systems, you need muscles," he said, referencing Belli's earlier work building the Pomellato Virtuosi Jewelry Academy. "You already had this idea with Pomellato, I just wanted to scale it up because certain initiatives begin to gain real momentum only when they achieve scale."

The program currently offers about 62,000 hours of training and more than 22,400 hours of internships, staffed by more than 400 master artisans and professionals. Curricula cover apparel, menswear tailoring, leather goods, jewelry, eyewear, fashion communication and management, with dedicated modules on technology, artificial intelligence, new materials and sustainability. Keeping partner schools active across the regions was a deliberate choice, de Meo said, to avoid draining talent toward Milan and to win support from local municipalities.

The network is open to competitors, the CEO added. "If our competitors wanted to join or contribute, we'd welcome them. [Ditto for] the placement of students who have completed the training program, because we can all benefit from it," he said, stressing that the priority is "maintaining a high standard and ensuring stable, well-paid jobs for the students."

De Meo also addressed pricing strategy, acknowledging the industry's post-pandemic price escalation alienated customers. "You have noted and criticized the fact that the luxury industry had created a disconnection between value and the price charged to customers. We are trying to adjust this because we recognize it too," he said. "This situation led to the loss of [between] 50 to 70 million customers, and we need to win them back. However, that doesn't necessarily mean lowering prices, there are many other options: you can increase value, come up with creative ideas that make people see the worth in the price we ask."

He described the industry as suffering from a "squint" — a split focus between ultra-high-end and aspirational shoppers — while neglecting the "classic, loyal customer" in between, which he called "the heart of the system."

On persistent rumors about creative direction changes — Anthony Vaccarello's possible exit from Saint Laurent and Pierpaolo Piccioli's from Balenciaga — de Meo declined comment on both.

With KApE now live, Kering has tied its Italian manufacturing base directly to a training infrastructure it controls, positioning the group to defend craft capacity as it works to recalibrate its price-value equation.