The year 2021 ran, when marketing experts in purchasing behaviors and analysts pushed, loudly, on the need to make sales and distribution strategies more efficient on global markets. They asked clothing companies, especially those of luxury, to implement massive investments. The aim was to enhance purchases both on their digital channels and on those of the international multi -branded platforms, to offer what specialists called “a digital customer experience effective”. An urgency also dictated by the Eurostat data which, in that post pandemic period, recorded a European average of buyers online by 56 percent aged between 16 and 74 years.
Now, after only four years, after that euphoria of virtual comperes, things have changed considerably and, in the last two years, the luxury electronic commerce sector has experienced a radical transformation due to a phase of contraction of purchases. In short, the thrust of the so -called “purchases for revenge”, followed by the Covid bubble, has been exhausted and in the first months of 2025 it is calculated that sales via the web fell by 28 percent on an annual basis. Let’s start with Yoox Net-A-Porter Group, the pioneer company in the world of Italian luxury, the first start-up that managed to attract the most prestigious brands of luxury, starting with Giorgio Armani, and then expanded to the quotation on the stock exchange. Well, it is now in deep crisis, to the point of planning a series of layoffs.
In short, the descending parable is this: Federico Marchetti, brilliant Ravenna with the nose of business, as well as creator of Yoox, in 2015 promoted a merger of his company with Net-A-Porter of the Richemont group, creating the Yoox Net-A-Porter (YNAP) group which, in 2018, became owned by the Swiss multinational. In 2023, Richemont is on the verge of giving a majority share to Farfetch, the powerful marketplace based in London, founded in 2007, which, however, then falls into sales and is recovered by the Korean Coupang.
Thus, last year, Richemont turns to Luxexperience, the holding listed on the New York Stock Exchange, based in Munich, which also manages MyTheresa. And here we are today, at the news of the 20 percent dismissal of the Italian Ynap staff: 211 redundancies out of a total of 1,091 employees. Of these, about 160 are concentrated in the Bologna area, while 51 concern the Milan office. Instead, worldwide, the reorganization plan extends to 700 positions, also touching the United Kingdom, the USA and other states. “The abrupt cutting for the workforce arrives in a moment of economic difficulties and crises of the entire sector”, reads the various official press releases.
And the numbers are clear: Yoox Net-A-Porter Group recorded a drop in revenues of 191 million in the last tax year and cumulative losses so much that, at the end of 2024, the accounts recorded a red of 1.8 billion, with little probability of recovery in the current year. Also in an official note from Luxexperience we read that “layoffs are part of a strategy that wants to grow the company growing after years of flexion and that in any case Italy will remain an operational hub in the long term, in particular for the off-prox segment. The group aims at a value of the goods sold equal to 4 billion euros by 2029 “.
Value that appears very improbable, considered the bad state of health of luxury in general and e-commerce in particular all over the world. Indeed, the scenario is vaguely apocalyptic, as had already been perceived by one of the first shoulder straps in the sector, that of Farfetch.
“Red sink” also for Matches Fashion, the digital luxury seller who fired over 273 employees when he decided to suspend his activities after being put in controlled administration, at the end of June 2024, by the Sensers Group that had detected it only the year before.
And it has not ended here, the list extends: the news that Ssense, the Canadian luxury site, “lighthouse of coolness and contemporaneity”, presented an application for bankruptcy. According to the CEO Rami Atallah “This decline is also partly due to the Policies of the Trump Administration. The duties of 25 percent imposed on goods from Canada had a devastating impact. In addition, the decision by the US government to cancel the exemption de minimis, which protects the packages of value of less than 800 dollars from the customs rates, gave the final grace blow ».
Last fall in order of time is that of the Florentine online seller Luisaviaroma, who announced the closure of the Milan headquarters in Milan, inaugurated in 2024, resorting to the negotiated composition of the crisis at the Court of Florence and asking for a suspension of 120 days from the legal actions by suppliers and creditors. The top management of the company, controlled 40 percent by Roberta Benaglia’s Style Capital Fund, therefore intend to take rehabilitation actions with the idea of using this procedure as a tool for a complete renovation and a possible restart.
There is no doubt that web platforms and online sellers find themselves having to face complex challenges: from the margins in contraction to increasingly expensive logistics, up to the competition that also comes from alternative markets such as the “second hand” and the phenomenon of the “dupes”, that is, the products inspired but not original. Not to mention shipping costs, return and personalized boxes, priority telephone lines, information on extra detailed products, photographic shots on a mannequin instead of an avatar.
“We are faced with a complicated moment for fashion,” Beppe Angiolini intervenes, entrepreneur and founder of the Sugar stores of Arezzo. «I don’t think it can be said that the decline of digital coincides with the rediscovery of the physical store. I don’t see more crowded boutiques as it once was. It is true that people are rediscovering the taste of a “humanized” shopping, that is, they prefer to choose by perhaps advising from the staff. Many enter our shop to sit at the bar, or to visit the gallery. We also have 11 rooms for hospitality. The new strength of the physical places lies precisely in the diversification of the offer of experiences and in the ability to know how to take the customer by hand to pamper and reassure him. Which is difficult to have with digital purchase. Probably the new concept of luxury lies in this cure ».
It is not possible to ignore the fact that the physical retail trade has come to life. This is demonstrated by the question for luxury spaces on streets such as Bond Street in London, Avenue Montaigne in Paris, or via Monte Napoleone in Milan, where the mega boutique of Louis Vuitton has recently reopened which as the leaders narrate “is a place where beauty and knowledge take different forms: clothing, design, art, architecture and good food”. That of the Cerea brothers.
«It is true, in my reality of two squares, Palermo and Taormina, and nine points of sale, I can say that there has been a qualitative growth in sales in the boutiques from 2022 to today. The entrances and value of purchases have increased, “says manager Mario dell’Oglio, who adds:« But if physical sales are growing, this does not compensate for the digital crisis. In general, the impressive volumes of the past have ceased, and many platforms have tried to recover with a crazy policy of discounts, losing turnover and margins. To this is added a certain disaffection to fashion products: many important brands have completely disappeared from consumers radar. Those who come to buy in boutique get advice, do not seek the brand, but the quality and the content. The purchase is much more aware ».
And on these issues, the conference on October 14 in Rome will be concentrated on the new forms of purchase and sales, promoted by the Boyer Chamber, in the presence of the Minister of Made in Italy Adolfo Urso. “Due to a wrong price policy, we discouraged the final consumer,” explains Maura Basili, president of the Buyer Chamber. «Fashionable travels are now preferred, personal or home care. A serious reflection is needed to put a fundamental sector back for the Italian economy, so it is urgent to sit around a table to look for new content and alternative strategies ».
