Khouloud Mouawad

Original Marines S.p.A.

Original Marines is a company specialized in the production and distribution of casual wear and sportswear, aiming at the best quality/price relation, founded in 1983 by five business men from Campania. Everything started at the beginning of the 1980s with the production of plain white T-shirts made to look like "the ones Marines wear". The item was a great success and 25 million T-shirts were sold in a few years. It was a great success for the five business men from Campania, who started off thinking of a clothes company and ended up with a successful business, currently operating in Italy and abroad. Only ten years after they started, the founding members set out on a new adventure: retail sales. In 1993 they inaugurated the first, single-brand store. Only four years later there were over 100 stores, Original Marines franchises, all over Italy. From then on the Original Marines brand has grown and developed exponentially. In 2004 there were over 350 franchise stores, as well as the 50 Cartoon Village direct points of sale and the 28 in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. In 2005 there were 374 single-brand Original Marines stores. Currently Original Marines stores can be found all over the world – there are over 600 single-brand stores and 66 of them are abroad.