LuisaViaRoma aims for relaunch with new investments and a new strategy
CEO Andorlini rises to 50 per cent of the e-tailer's capital and tells his vision for the future: 'More exclusivity and research, market selection'. In March, the company is to exit the negotiated crisis settlement
There are little more than three months to 'save' LuisaViaRoma, an online sales platform for high-end fashion (but also has physical shops in Florence and New York) that has run into financial difficulty and is in need of a capital injection.
Style Capital, the private equity fund led by Roberta Benaglia, which in 2021, during the Covid phase that marked the boom of online commerce, with 37 other parties had acquired 42% of the Florentine company through the vehicle Florence srl, for a sum of 140 million euros, will not put them up. Style Capital held 22% of Florence but, thanks to its ownership of 'Serie A' shares, it controlled its governance, just as it controlled the governance of LuisaViaRoma.
In recent weeks Style Capital divested its stake. Tommaso Maria Andorlini, ceo of LuisaViaRoma and founder of the shops Playground, Sotf and the company Ffw, which develops fashion e-commerce sites (all businesses acquired by LuisaViaRoma), which already held 8% of the Florentine e-retailer through Holding 1, took over 22% of Florence. The value of the operation has not been disclosed: Andorlini simply explained to Sole 24 Ore that it is a personal investment, realised through a financial mechanism.
With these two holdings (8% of LuisaViaRoma and 22% of Florence), the CEO now controls 50% of the shares and approximately 70% of the voting rights of LuisaViaRoma, founded by the Florentine entrepreneur Andrea Panconesi, who still holds 50% of the capital. At the origin of the share reorganisation, in a delicate phase for the company that last July was admitted to the negotiated crisis settlement procedure and has ongoing solidarity contracts for its 250 employees, there are differences in views and strategies.
Andorlini explains: 'I bought the stake in Style Capital to bring LuisaViaRoma back into a long-term entrepreneurial dimension: the market context with respect to 2021 has changed profoundly, and now patience and an orderly management that looks to the future are needed. Luxury will not restart like a rocket in 2026, and the entire fashion system will have to be good at finding a dialogue with the consumer, who on the one hand has been hit by the uncontrolled rise in prices, and on the other has lost faith in the supply chain due to the emergence of cases of labour exploitation'. A change of pace is needed: "LuisaViaRoma was among the first to do ecommerce and to use influencers, today we are once again facing a challenge of change and we must imagine the future".
