The traditional meeting with the sector’s operators, called to question the future of retail and the changes taking place, took place last May in Milan. The conference opened with a fashion photography by expert Achim Berg, former senior partner at McKinsey & Co., co-founder of State of Fashion Report and FashionSights, a corporate think tank and consultancy firm for the fashion sector. Berg started from the realization that 2025 will not be, as many had hoped and assumed, the year of the turning point: “It could be so in 2026, if the sector is able to seize the opportunities of a complex situation as the current one, taking into account the geopolitical framework, lack of confidence, price increases and the lack of originality of the high-end market”.
“In my opinion – pointed out Berg – the sector lacks ideas and around there are always the same products, because many managers have only managed growth in the last eight years and now face a much more difficult market. In fact, it is much harder to win over the consumer, who wants to be entertained, surprised and excited. I think we should go back there. It will take some new ideas, a little creativity and global improvement and then the cycle will start again”.
Wholesale and trade fairs
Claudio Marenzi, president of Herno, gave his vision of multibrand distribution as the real test of a brand: “Wholesale is a gym. That’s where you really compare yourself: on the design, on the price, on the quality. Selling in your own store is easier, the customer has already chosen you. In multibrand, you are one among many. There you really understand what you are worth”.
Trade fairs also play a fundamental role for Marenzi: “They are places of osmosis where a brand can grow, change skin, rise or fall. It happened to us. The fairs are regenerative mechanisms, if they disappear the system risks stagnation»
Selective retail
Marco Palmieri, CEO of the Piquadro Group, reported on the experience of the company that has focused on selective retail to select retailers based on verifiable standards, Control product communication also in the wholesale channel and reduce exposure to marketplaces, enhancing brand identity and protecting marginality: “Selective distribution is a legal institution, but above all an instrument of strategic positioning – explained Palmieri -. It allows the company to choose business partners based on objective criteria (quality, service, training, image), valid for all and non-discriminatory. This ensures consistency between the brand’s values and how it is sold”.
Maintain uniqueness in multi-channel
How is it possible to operate within the multi-brand distribution without allowing the brand identity to be confused in the sea of various proposals and thus lose its appeal? According to Danilo Piarulli, Chief Consumer Officer of Golden Goose, we must start from the proximity to the consumer: “The consumer is a real obsession for us. We focused on the concept of “consumer” a few years ago, driven by the desire to differentiate ourselves, given the wide offer in the market. Through the CRM we started to “feed” all the information related to our end customers and tried to bring their dreams into the brand. It is in this perspective that we have also developed our co-creation project, allowing consumers to personalize their sneakers through messages, colors, personal memories with the help of our tailors. An initiative that has helped to strengthen the link between our audience and the brand, even when you go from offline to online. Bringing the same emotion and empathy into the digital world, with a remote co-creation service, was a great challenge, won thanks to technology”.
For Slowear, in the name of the brand is already embedded its philosophy: make quality anti-fast fashion its mission. CEO Piero Braga says: “A concept so strong that we decided to unify under this umbrella our four brands, expression of different specialties (pants, knitwear, blouses and outerwear) and that will allow us to better convey our identity, made of gentle luxury, fair price and creativity. As for the distribution channels, they are all valid. Each brand has the task of finding its right mix to be competitive at that precise moment and for Slowear, in the past very unbalanced on retail, it is time for a re-proportioning, opening up the comparison with wholesale”.
Lello Caldarelli, Founder and CEO of Antony Morato, says that “today our turnover is generated for 75% by wholesale, but also within this perimeter we work assecondando different dynamics: one account is to relate with the small shop, an account with the chains. We offer differentiated services, to better dialogue with realities that speak a different language. How not to get lost? The CRM helps us, with a precise mapping of all our customers. It is a challenge but also a wealth: unlike retail, where it is easy to become self-referential, wholesale stimulates comparison and encourages companies to have a broader vision”.
Workforce and retention
The importance of sales staff in creating a loyalty relationship was highlighted by Francesco Massara, founder of the Retail Observatory – Iulm University, who called it “skin of the company”, because, like the epidermis, represents a vital organ for every company, that is the interface of meeting with its customers, the way in which the brand is “experienced” through people.
Matteo Morandi, CEO of Percassi Retail, has instead highlighted as “What is happening in retail is a real Copernican revolution, where the asset of people plays a decisive role. Anzi, più in generale, si può dire che sono cambiate le “P” del marketing: accanto a quella di “Persone” – una risorsa sempre più scarsa e oggi più difficile da convincere a venire a lavorare in un negozio – c’è la “P” di “Place”, ovvero lo spazio vero e proprio di vendita, where success is primarily measured by how successful you are at being a customer centre”.
Retail and culture
The exploration of new ways of understanding retail is through the experience of Gabriele Casaccia, founder and creative director of Mental Athletic, who says: “We talk about movement, and it’s not only a physical movement, but also cultural. We started running, because I’m a runner, but today we talk about movement, not just running. We are shifting towards a concept of sport as a way of life, a new way of seeing the world. The goal is not to pursue performance, but to rediscover the pleasure and expressive power of the body that moves. We talk about food, but never about performance-oriented diets. We explore the fields with a curious look, with the desire to communicate something new. Art, photography, cooking, technology: each page is a fragment of VIBE, the key word of our entire project”.
Innovative also the approach of David Pujolar, CEO of Footasylum: “Our strength is that we know our consumer very well. We carry out many activities together with young influencers for whom we create ad hoc product lines. We also realize “Lock In”, a kind of reality visible through our YouTube channel: already reached the fifth season, totaled 17 million viewers. The protagonists are all influencers who wear our products such as, tops, T-shirts, shoes and much more. They are successful pieces because they are sold immediately the day after transmission or during the same day via e-commerce or through our stores”.
B2B is becoming more and more important for Zalando
Marta Cecilia Grassi, head of Strategy for Italy and Spain of the German player said: “The focus is Zeos, a network of logistics centres, technological software and other solutions (for example the marketplace integrator Tradebyte), useful to operate in a faster, more efficient and cost-controlling way on European markets”. In the first quarter, revenues from the B2B channel were 240 million euros for Zalando (+11.6%), while B2C turnover is around 2.18 billion, but the company aims to make it a multi-billion business in the medium term.
Grassi then summarized the ingredients of Zalando’s success in the B2C channel, which are: differentiation in quality (also with exclusive collab), expansion in lifestyle (wellness, beauty etc.), inspiration and entertainment (social and conversational commerce, the Stories, the virtual assistant in different languages, the Follow My Style tool in collaboration with the community).
The role of AI for optimal assortment
According to Jacopo Cricelli and Marco Ruffa, respectively CEO and General Manager of Data Life, a software development and consulting company in the field of Decision Intelligence and generative and predictive AI: “Major problems of unsold stocks, growing markdown and the need to proceed with sales are emerging more and more often: all enemies of profitability and market presence. The trend is to move towards automation and stock management in a new way”. And here artificial intelligence comes into play, which can be used for forecasting purposes, thanks to the set of available data, orient in replenishment and positively affect profits”.
“The perception of the usefulness of these tools among companies in recent years has changed a lot and today there is great interest. What we notice is that behind a poorly stocked store there is a company system that does not listen to the point of sale and does not work well. There are jammed information flows, unread data, probably a poor focus from the center to the periphery”.
