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  "description": "As the Swiss apparel brand turns 50, the company's CEO reflects on what came before, and the challenges and opportunities ahead.",
  "path": "/assos-ceo-edwin-navez-on-why-they-start-where-other-brands-end/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-03T18:07:46.000Z",
  "site": "https://escapecollective.com",
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  "textContent": "Assos, Suvi Loponen\n\nAssos has been building its reputation for decades, and this year, it turns 50. The Swiss apparel brand was founded in Ticino, close to the Italian border, in 1976 by Toni Maier and his wife Eliane, who built it on an obsessive approach to fabric development and garment construction that remains largely intact today.\n\nThe company is renowned for its in-house expertise – today, a large part of Assos's employees work in research and development, and its fabrics are produced within close proximity to the headquarters.\n\nWhile Assos stays true to its roots, it has also changed over the years, and that extends to the company's leadership. Assos sold a majority stake in 2015 to a US-led investment consortium that included the New York private equity firm TZP Group. Edwin Navez, a Belgian-born engineer who came to cycling via the pharmaceuticals industry, as well as stints at Michael Kors and Versace, has been CEO since 2022. He took the role in one of the worst years the industry had seen, and has since overseen the brand's expansion into colour, new price points, and a broader customer base – all without, he would argue, touching the Assos 'DNA'.\n\nNavez, closest to the camera, has become an ever-keener cyclist through his role at Assos.\n\nWe caught up with Navez to chat about the brand's direction as well as the EF Education-EasyPost / EF Education-Oatly kit partnership, which marks Assos' move up to WorldTour kit sponsorship.\n\n_The following interview has been lightly edited for flow and clarity._\n\n**Suvi Loponen: I wanted to start with your background, because you came to Assos through finance and you were working with some pretty well-known fashion brands – Michael Kors, Versace, and Philipp Plein. Did you end up in the fashion world first, and how did you go from there into cycling?**\n\nEdwin Navez: I'm an engineer by background. I worked in heavy industry, then consultancy, then pharma. It was when I was in pharma, based in Geneva, with my family living in Lugano – a five-hour commute – that I decided I needed a better work-life balance. I didn't want to leave Lugano, which is paradise on earth, so I started looking for work in an industry with more of a presence there. That meant fashion.\n\nAt the time, Kors was preparing its IPO and I had relevant experience in listed companies, so that was the way in. I've never been passionate about pure fashion. It was always fashion linked to operations, to culture change inside companies. That thread runs through everything I've done. Moving from luxury fashion into outdoor, into cycling, felt like a natural continuation rather than a change of direction.\n\n**SL: And were you a cyclist before you joined Assos, or have you become one since?**\n\nEN: I've been in Switzerland for almost 25 years and I was born in Belgium, so I've been on a bike all my life. But it was never really my sport – I was riding to go and play tennis or squash, or just with the kids. It's really since joining Assos, and especially over the last three years, that it became something I organise my life around.\n\nMy holidays are about riding. When I travel for business, I take my bike. A few weeks ago I was in Shanghai, then Dubai, before this, and I rode in both cities. It's a wonderful way to connect with local communities in a way a business meeting never quite manages.\n\n**SL: With your background, I'm curious about the parallels and differences between the industries you've worked in. Cycling apparel was built on performance and function, whereas the bigger luxury fashion brands are probably built more on image and desire. What do you see as the similarities and differences?**\n\nEN: More parallel than different, honestly. What we do is luxury apparel for cycling, which means we put much more emphasis on performance, because cycling is one of the most demanding sports you can design for: the variation in temperature, the volume of moisture generated, the wind. So performance is one pillar and quality is the other, and Assos is obsessive about both.\n\nWhat is similar: brand positioning, how you protect it, how you curate it, who distributes you. The margin structure is very similar. The supply chain is very similar. The passion of the people inside the company. The storytelling. I feel that what we do is luxury apparel for cyclists – it's a continuation of the same logic, not a departure from it.\n\n### This post is for subscribers only\n\nBecome a member to get access to all content\n\nSubscribe now",
  "title": "Assos CEO Edwin Navez on why they 'start where other brands end'",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-03T18:07:50.135Z"
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