Peter Littmann

Peter Littmann is a native Czech executive with a doctorate in business administration from the University of Cologne who became chief executive of Hugo Boss in 1993. He was 46 when the Italian group Marzotto, then the majority owner of Hugo Boss, hired him. His earlier experience was in marketing textiles internationally, but of a different kind, namely carpets, so he arrived as a fashion novice, and yet he put the company back on a growth track in record time. He gave the company the Hugo Boss name to soften what the history calls a bossy image, launched the Hugo and Baldessarini labels beside Boss in a three-label strategy first shown in Cologne in 1993, and moved about half of the manufacturing still done in Germany abroad, mainly to eastern Europe. Profits jumped by 74 percent in 1994. He did not renew his contract, which ran to the end of 1997, after reported disagreement over the company's strategic direction.