Replay’s 9zero1 Bet Did Not Reverse the Sales Slide

Fashion Box SpA, the Asolo company behind Replay, closed 2024 at €235.4 million in statutory sales, down from €251.1 million two years earlier. That was the first full year of the 9zero1 relaunch, the 1990s straight jean Matteo Sinigaglia had just sold as the one luxury you cannot buy.

The CEO of Fashion Box had told an interviewer in March 2024 that genuineness was Replay’s answer to TikTok vintage, cautious spending and a tired denim category. The cut is still on the site. The growth is not.

The Archive Bet Against a Denim Slump

Sinigaglia took over Replay in 2010, five years after founder Claudio Buziol died. Buziol had registered the Replay brand in 1978 and set up Fashion Box in Asolo, Treviso, in 1981. The first Replay jeans arrived in 1989. Production hit one million garments inside two years.

By 2023 the house was known for Hyperflex, a stretch five-pocket that had carried the brand through the previous decade. The 9zero1 was the other file: a high-waist, button-fly straight from the 1990s, a model Replay has long grouped with that decade’s big denim hits, with more than three million pairs sold at its peak.

Soft-launch stock had already been in stores for a few months, from November 2023, at €149. Positive feedback, Sinigaglia said, was the signal to take the jean to a full campaign. He framed the revival as a complement to Hyperflex, not a replacement, and compared the cut’s second life to rock’n’roll that younger listeners never saw live.

Genuineness and authenticity are currently the greatest luxury for us, because it’s the only thing you can’t invent. Either you are authentic and have the history, the story and the references to prove it, or you don’t.

Matteo Sinigaglia, CEO, Fashion Box SpA, March 2024 interview

He called 2023 a year of reflection, said 2020 had taught the company not to overproduce, and called 2024 “very promising so far.” He also said the 9zero1 would get several upgrades through the year, and that the people in the campaign had all been met in person.

Replay Reissued the 9zero1 for Every Gender

The original 9zero1 was cut for men. The 2024 version was sold as unisex under the line “One Fits All Generations,” with a men’s M9Z1 and a women’s W9Z1, both high-waist straight, plus matching jackets, shirts and genderless logo tees. Launch copy put the capsule at $65 to $245. Fabrics sat in the 11-13 oz range, some with recycled cotton.

Current product pages still describe a straight leg, gull-wing back pockets, an R embroidery and the Replay lettering loop. One women’s dark-blue W9zero1 is listed as 12-oz recycled-cotton indigo with a mid stone wash, GRS-certified, 62 percent cotton and 38 percent recycled cotton. A unisex dark-blue 9zero1 is listed at 10.5 oz with whiskering and a small branded insert on a front pocket.

The campaign that followed was not a quiet archive drop. Photographer Thierry Le Gouès shot a roster that mixed sport, music and fashion, and Martin Garrix was billed as a co-designer as well as a face. On Replay’s own 9zero1 pages, Garrix called the cut a return of “the OG fit.”

THE 9ZERO1 CAMPAIGN ROSTER

• Music: Dutch DJ Martin Garrix, signed as co-designer and campaign face.
• Athletics: Usain Bolt, already a Replay partner from 2021, and All Blacks player Beauden Barrett with the New Zealand rugby side.
• Football: Paulo Dybala, Marco Verratti, Neymar Jr., plus club deals with Bayern Munich, Paris Saint-Germain and Ajax.
• Fashion and culture: Leni Klum, Amelia Gray, Maye Musk.

A Highsnobiety tie-in in May 2024, titled Going Beyond the Stars, put German designer Luis Dobbelgarten in the 9zero1. Hypebeast later shot Garrix in Ibiza and Neymar in Saudi Arabia for a Home Away From Home series that still sits on Replay’s UK 9zero1 pages.

Statutory Sales Slid to €235.4 Million

The parent company’s Italian filings are the cleanest scoreboard for that wager. Fashion Box’s statutory accounts filed in Italy, compiled from the Registro Imprese and updated on 25 September 2026, show sales peaking in 2022 and slipping through the 9zero1 year.

FASHION BOX SPA STATUTORY RESULTS

From 2022 to 2024, statutory sales fell 6.2 percent. From 2023 to 2024, the drop was 4.5 percent. Profit moved the other way. Net income rose to €6.2 million from €1.4 million, on a slightly larger payroll and a slightly smaller wage bill (€23.1 million against €24.0 million).

Those parent-company figures sit below the group numbers Sinigaglia has used in public. Fashion Box said 2022 group sales were almost €340 million, up 18.3 percent from €287 million in 2021, with an EBITDA margin of about 15 percent. The two series are different perimeters. The group number includes the wider Replay network. The statutory table is Fashion Box SpA alone, share capital €11.3 million, still based at Via Marcoai 1 in Asolo.

The company had already cut the assortment. Sinigaglia said the range would shrink another 15 percent for spring/summer 2024, after a year of self-reflection and after 2020 taught it not to chase volume. The 2024 filing reads like that discipline landing: fewer euros through the door, more kept. It does not read like a 1990s icon reversing a slide.

Replay’s own site still puts the brand in more than 50 countries, with exports at 90.5 percent of turnover and a wholesale and shop-in-shop net of 4,000 outlets, 105 retail stores and 125 corners. That is a wholesale machine. When denim slows, the bill arrives there first. Euromonitor found global jeans sales were stagnant in 2024, even as some premium names later talked up heavier Japanese-inspired product at much higher tickets.

Bayern’s Contract Runs Until June 2027

The 9zero1 faces were not a one-season stunt. They sat on top of a sports-sponsorship book Replay has been building for a decade, which is how a Treviso denim house keeps showroom traffic in Germany, France, the Netherlands and beyond.

REPLAY’S SPORT AND MUSIC BOOK

1. 2015: Neymar Jr. joins as ambassador on a three-year deal, later renewed in 2018, with a co-branded NJR capsule in 2020.
2. 2019: Replay becomes official denim partner to Paris Saint-Germain on a four-year pact.
3. 2020: Four-year deals with the All Blacks as official formalwear and denimwear partner, and with Ajax.
4. 2021: Usain Bolt is added on the athletics side as the brand turns 40.
5. 2022: Replay sponsors the Rolex Monte-Carlo Masters.
6. October 2023: A four-year Bayern Munich sponsor deal begins, running to June 2027, covering players, staff and management in formal and casual kit.
7. 16 October 2024: A Replay x Bayern capsule is unveiled at Breuninger in Munich, including an Eco Plus 9zero1 jacket at €199 and a denim overshirt at €219.

Sinigaglia called the Bayern tie-up more than a partnership, a match of values. The contract outlasts the 9zero1 launch film. It is also a wholesale tool. The October 2024 capsule was exclusive at Breuninger as well as on Replay’s own German channels, the same department-store group that had already hosted 9zero1 pop-ups in Munich, Stuttgart and Freiburg in March and April 2024.

The campaign film with Garrix still lives on Replay’s official YouTube channel, alongside 9zero1 spots for Bolt, Dybala, Neymar and Bayern. View counts on those clips sit in the low hundreds, not the millions the guest list might imply.

In late 2023 Sinigaglia had also called a stock-market listing by 2025 “not inconceivable.” Fashion Box has not gone public. The 2024 profit recovery did not reopen that door.

Why Hyperflex Still Shows Up in Menswear Shops

Independent menswear shops in Britain and South Africa were still selling Replay in September 2026 as weekend kit, and the jean they put in the window was often Hyperflex, not the 1990s straight. A Johannesburg retailer featured Hyperflex Anbass slim jeans as the denim in a full Replay look on 18 September 2026. That is the stretch model Sinigaglia said 9zero1 would sit beside, and it is the one the trade still knows how to replenish.

The 9zero1 relaunch left almost no public argument on X. There is no long thread about fit, price or whether a football-club jean can be authentic. What remains is stock. Maze Clothing in Liverpool posted new Replay jeans on 19 September 2026. Huddersfield menswear shops filmed Replay five-pockets with Lacoste shirts as Saturday outfit films on 24 September 2026. The brand’s daily life is still a men’s wholesale jean, not a TikTok archive story.

That gap was built in. In May 2025, speaking at a Milan retail conference, Sinigaglia put Replay at 75 percent men and 25 percent women and said the house would chase women and Gen Z next. Sport and music, he said, open those doors. Authenticity, a 40-year history and an archive of 70,000 garments were the rest of the pitch. The 9zero1 had been aimed at every gender. The mix had not moved on the strength of one cut.

Women Still Account for a Quarter of Replay

About a year before that May 2025 talk, Replay hired Natalia Barbadesi, a designer with a decade of U.S. experience, to invest in women’s product. Sinigaglia called women a sector with room to grow and said wholesale would stay resilient. He also said the company would likely organise its locations differently than it does now.

Replay returned to Pitti Uomo 108 in Florence from 17 to 20 June 2025 with a Spring/Summer 2026 collection it described as urban versatility, denim plus casual and statement pieces. Sinigaglia called Pitti a place to share the brand’s vision with partners. The 9zero1 was no longer the sentence.

THE 2025 SHIFT AFTER THE ARCHIVE PULL

• The mix: 75 percent men, 25 percent women, with women’s design now a named investment.
• The archive: 70,000 garments, used as proof of history rather than as a once-a-decade relaunch.
• The channel: Still a wholesale company, with Sinigaglia arguing that wholesale will hold.
• The listing: The public offering once described as conceivable by 2025 has not arrived.

Nearshoring was already on the 2024 list. Sinigaglia said Red Sea disruption had complicated deliveries and that the answer was to change what and where the company buys, so end users would not feel it. Durability, he said, was the real sustainability test: a jean people would wear again, not a sale that made the world worse.

Thirty Percent Off a 1990s Icon

Replay’s French homepage in late September 2026 opened on the Fall/Winter 2026 collection: western shirts, barrel and baggy fits, a biker jacket from €939, bootcuts and leather-collar denim. The 9zero1 is not that story. On German, British, Italian and U.S. 9zero1 pages, the 9zero1 line is now marked down.

Men’s and women’s straight 9zero1 jeans that launched at €149 are listed in Germany from €104.30, a clean 30 percent cut. Matching jackets sit at €107.40 from €179, a 40 percent cut. The British shop shows some M9zero1 jeans at £112 from £160, also 30 percent off. The U.S. shop still offers core 9zero1 jeans from $145. Logo tees that were €49 are €29.40.

The slogan was that genuineness cannot be invented or bought. The product can be marked down. Fashion Box still designs in a 25,000-square-metre Asolo plant built as a replica of an early-20th-century American factory, still exports most of what it makes, and still dresses football clubs on contracts that run past the campaign. The 1990s jean that was meant to tell younger customers why Replay exists is now a sale rail next to a western season, while the stretch Hyperflex the house never actually retired keeps walking out of independent shops.