MILAN — Luxury online retailer Giglio.com will kick off the holiday selling season with its new lifestyle section, the company told WWD.
In addition to its high-end fashion and accessories, the Palermo, Sicily-based company on Monday will begin selling furnishing accessories, designer tableware, high-tech accessories, textiles, books and magazines from brands like Brunello Cucinelli, Versace Home, Etro Home and others.
The retailer said its international customer base amounted to 145,000 shoppers at the end of the first semester this year.
In a statement sent to WWD, Giglio said the lifestyle division is key to its larger growth strategy. This year, the company released its new Android and iOS app and signed a partnership with Vestiaire Collective.
The retailer, which is publicly listed on Euronext, a regulated market organized and managed by Borsa Italiana, posted sales of 51.1 million euros in 2022, up 35 percent year-over-year.
“The diversification towards home decor is the result of a careful market analysis that has revealed how fashion, home decor, and design have synergies and complementarities that target a well-defined category of customers,” said Giglio.com president and chief executive officer Giuseppe Giglio, who hails from the family that started the boutique in the 1960s. Under Giglio SpA, the Giglio family runs six physical boutiques in Palermo.
In recent years, peer fashion e-commerce sites have tapped into the potential of interiors: LuisaViaRoma, Ssense, Mytheresa, Net-a-porter and Moda Operandi have all expanded into the home category in recent years.
For Giglio.com, growth last year was accomplished across geographies and especially outside Europe. The company generated 70 percent of its sales abroad, with non-European countries representing 50 percent of its total revenues. The U.S. and the Middle East, as well as Japan and South Korea, are among the best-performing areas, increasing in the double- and triple-digit range. For instance, business in the U.S. jumped 40 percent, only partially dented by a contraction in consumer confidence in the last quarter of the year, while South Korea and Taiwan increased 66 percent and 80 percent, respectively.
In 2022, the company improved its international user experience, debuting Korean and Japanese versions of its website. “The Far East is where our youngest clients are concentrated, they are real, digital-savvy Gen Z-ers embracing our platform via mobile and app,” Giglio said at the time.
In July 2022, it also debuted a Liquid blockchain-based bitcoin used as a token for loyalty programs geared at those geographies.
