Renzo Rosso was born in 1955 in Brugine, in northeastrn Italy, where his family operated a small farm. Rosso's talent for business was evident early on, however. At the age of ten, Rosso began breeding rabbits--starting with a single rabbit given to him as a gift. Rosso's rabbit farm quickly counted more than 100 rabbits, giving him his first taste for fast-growing profits. Rosso's distaste for schoolwork, however, left him with modest plans for his future, as he told interview: 'My dream as a kid was just to be a little more than a simple workman.'
At the age of 15, however, Rosso heard of the opening of a new textile manufacturing school. 'I didn't like to study,' Rosso told Interview, 'and the rumor was that at this new school that had just opened--the first fashion school in Italy--it would be very easy to graduate.' Rosso did graduate and at the same time discovered a flair for fashion design. At the age of 20, Rosso began designing his own clothes; then, in 1975, he joined a local textiles company, Moltex, led by Adriano Goldschmied to keep him on, reducing his salary and placing him on a commision. 'This gave me an incredible incentive,' Rosso told Interview, 'The company completely turned around, and not long after I said to him, 'Thank you very much, now it's time for me to move on.'
Rosso proposed that he and Goldschmied form a partnership based around the promotion of new designer labels. Goldschmied agreed, selling Rosso 40 percent of the new company, called the Genius Group, which was launched in 1978. The Genius Group was responsible for creating a number of successful brand names, including Goldie, Ten Big Boys, Martin Guy, and Katherine Hamnett, and, of course, Rosso's own Diesel jeans brand.
Rosso's involvement with the Diesel brand remained entirely hands-on. In 1984, he debuted a new line, Diesel Kids, extending the company's jean-based fashions to cover the entire range of youth markets. Sensing the potential of the Diesel brand, Rosso bought out Goldschmied and the other Genius Group partners in 1985. By then, sales of Diesel-branded clothing amounted to about $5 million per year.