Tod’s set to launch ‘Italiantouch’ e-store

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Nov 20, 2012

Diego Della Valle is set to launch an e-store run by the new company Italiantouch, which he created with his son Andrea as part of the family holdings, Diego Della Valle & C. Instead of following the footsteps of the market specialists like Yoox and Net-a-porter, the Tod’s CEO has decided to focus his project a little closer to home, aiming to highlight and promote the ‘Made in Italy’ incentive. The project, which is yet to be officially announced, comes after the publication of the Tod’s group’s nine-month report on Wednesday.

A press release from the Italian shoemaker revealed the conclusion of an agreement to develop an e-commerce canal for the group. It specified that the e-store, “Italiantouch will be managed by a new global internet retailing company focused on the sale of leading luxury brands and exclusive artworks, interior design, cosmetics, jewelry, gourmet foods, hotel and travel.”

“The agreement to be entered into provides for the distribution of the products branded by the trademarks of the Group, either by means of Italiantouch’ own website and through a virtual store exclusively dedicated to the brands of the Group, accessible from the corporate websites of each brand. The internet channel will be initially activated in the Italian market and in the main European countries and eventually progressively expanded to the other reference markets of the brands,” said the company in its press release. The group, who achieved 893.6 million euros in sales revenues in 2011, owns the brands Tod’s, Hogan, fay and French shoe brand Roger Vivier.

CFO of the Tod’s group, Emilio Macellari, said that the company had already conducted e-commerce tests on their own site on the America market but it would prefer to pursue online activity via the Italiantouch company. Macellari told analysts at the conference that the Della Valle family support this move. “We have saved money with other potential players, we have more favorable conditions compared with other operators and we think this is the right solution.”

For the time being, Tod’s is the only brand in the portfolio but the group has confirmed that they will not be the only ones. The idea of the site is to highlight the best of luxury and style in Italy. For Diego Della Valle, this is a theme close to his heart given his book, Italian Touch, which came out in 2009, focusing on all that is elegant in Italy.