For the first time, LuisaViaRoma is exporting its physical concept store outside its historic Italian homeland. The famous transalpine multi-brand, specializing in fashion and luxury goods, has set its sights on its key market since 2022: the United States.
LuisaViaRoma combines e-commerce activities with physical concept stores, distributing nearly 600 luxury and designer brands. The company is now concretizing its international growth strategy with the opening of its first brick-and-mortar boutique in New York.
This is the third physical address opened to date, after its historic Florentine address and the one dedicated to contemporary designers. The boutique it opened in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, in 2019 has since closed.
In the heart of Manhattan
Announced a year and a half ago, retailer LuisaViaRoma ends a long wait with theofficial inauguration of its New York flagship located in the heart of Manhattan’s business district, at 1 Bond Street.
The leasing consultancy Retail by Mona reported at the end of 2022 that it had signed a long-term lease for the 1,200-square-meter retail space, located between Lafayette Street and Broadway, for an annual rent, at the time, of three million euros.
This first New York flagship occupies two floors of a historic building just a stone’s throw from the trendy NoHo district, expected to be the Big Apple’s most expensive by 2024.
Offering both men’s and women’s ready-to-wear collections, the store has chosen to target New York women, described by the brand as “opinion leaders in the fields of culture, business, entertainment and philanthropy”.
To achieve this, the luxury retailer has implemented a meticulous selection of brands distributed, ranging from luxury icons such as Chloé, Maison Margiela, Jil Sander and Lanvin to iconic New York designers such as Gabriela Hearst, Proenza Schouler and Helmut Lang.
This foray into American territory wasn’t blind, insofar as LuisaViaRoma launched a pop-up store in New York in 2018, in partnership with Spring Studios and Spring Place, in order to concretely test the market.
For LuisaViaRoma CEO Tommaso Maria Andorlini, freshly appointed at the end of July 2023, “this new multi-brand flagship offers our global clientele a high-level physical shopping experience. While our digital platform continues to offer first-class service, 24 hours a day, LuisaViaRoma New York sets a new standard for modern luxury retail in the city with its product offering and physical experience.”
Cultivating an exclusive image, in the spirit of a successful e-commerce player like MyTheresa, the new boutique offers a 206-square-meter private floor reserved for VIP customers. These will have access to special product catalogs, exclusive benefits and concierge styling services.
In addition to its three physical shopping addresses, the brand also has an exclusive exhibition center and press room in Milan, inaugurated in April.
Strategic America
TheItalian company founded by the Panconesi family, which opened its first boutique in Florence in 1929, has never concealed its ambitions for what remains its largest market after Italy: the United States.
Since the September 2021 acquisition of a 40% stake in LuisaViaRoma by private equity firm Style Capital, prior to finalization of the entire transaction, Roberta Benaglia, CEO of Style Capital, has cited the expansion of the retailer’s international presence as one of her top priorities. “The decision to open a store in the U.S. is one of the fundamental steps in LuisaViaRoma’s international development and growth strategy, within which the U.S. market will play an increasingly important role in the near future,” he said.
LuisaViaRoma’s e-commerce business alone generated 268 million euros in 2021. In mid-2022, the company announced that Italy would be its leading customer (23% of online sales), followed by the United States (14.9%), while the UK, Germany and France would account for just 11.7%, 9.9% and 5.6% respectively.
Bought out at the beginning of the year by CEO Tommaso Maria Andorlini, Holding It, a company specializing in retail and e-commerce services, has enabled LuisaViaRoma to change dimension by becoming a fully-fledged group. Holding It actually owns two companies: FFW srl, a provider of digital services for luxury e-commerce, and Playground srl, a distributor that runs a network of high-end sportswear boutiques called Soft.
This acquisition will boost the luxury retailer’s sales volume to almost 400 million euros by 2023, with growth prospects for 2024 of 450 million euros. The consolidation of the group should enable the brand “toaccelerate its growth in a key market as well as consolidate LuisaViaRoma’s position as a complete luxury shopping experience”.
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Featured Photo: © LuisaViaRoma
