In 1993 the family sold 25% of the business to investment business Gartmore to fund expansion, via the acquisition of Phoenix Mountaineering and Life Cycle. The strategy that did not work as hoped and by 1996 was placing the business into a "desperate" financial position. Faced with financial losses, a banking system that did not adequately support long term capital funding of the kind needed by the business, and a need for funding to support investment, a controlling majority stake in the business was transferred to investment group 21 Invest (now Investindustrial), the investing arm of the Italian Bonomi and Benetton empires, for £7 million, with Mike Parsons becoming Karrimor's president. Andrea Bonomi, the venture capital company's 31-year-old owner, had felt that Britain was "a fantastic place" for manufacturing, but under-appreciated by British people themselves, and considered Karrimor an exemplary family business (albeit in his view "mis-managed" ), owned by a "hardworking" family with a "fiercely loyal" workforce, and a good choice for UK investment.