Giglio.com Wants to Help Brands Improve Digital Capabilities

MILAN — Amid an iffy outlook for many of the fashion e-commerce pure plays, including Farfetch and Matches — the latter winding down its website operations this week — Italy’s Giglio.com is betting it can be the successful, albeit smaller, Trojan horse that wins the digital battle.

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The luxury online retailer, listed on the AIM Italia program of the Milan Stock Exchange dedicated to small and medium-sized companies, said Wednesday that it is introducing a new business-to-business unit providing digitalization services.

Digital Gateway is a new division leveraging Giglio.com’s 20-plus years of experience in running a fashion multibrand e-store providing business clients with services geared at ramping up their digital capabilities.

“The B2B evolution of our business model feels like a natural progression in today’s environment, which increasingly demands expertise and tools that can significantly impact the digitalization processes of companies,” said Giuseppe Giglio, president and chief executive officer of Giglio.com.

“Digital Gateway meets these needs with the best-in-class skills developed over Giglio.com’s many years of experience, which have been pivotal to our success,” he added.

The move can also be seen as an avenue of business diversification for Giglio.com, which in 2023 logged a 10 percent uptick in sales to 56.3 million euros, and improved profitability, with adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization standing at a loss of 200,000 euros, an advancement of 3 percentage points in two years.

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Digital Gateway’s services will include a shooting hub aimed at building e-commerce product catalogues for clients and brands, leveraging Giglio.com’s 20 photography studios and dedicated team; the creative hub, a studio developing custom editorial campaigns and marketing assets; the marketing hub dedicated to helping brands execute a high return on investment, tech-enabled marketing strategies, and the technology hub to help clients design their websites and technological infrastructures via Giglio.com’s proprietary technology.

Giglio.com was established in 1996 and functions as a marketplace with around 200 brick-and-mortar stores as partners, mainly based in Italy, in addition to France and Spain, among other countries.

As reported, last year Giglio.com linked with Vestiaire Collective to enter the secondhand market and introduced a design and lifestyle section, both contributing to an increase in its gross merchandise value. It also inaugurated a state-of-the-art complex in Palermo, Italy, covering 75,347 square feet that is dedicated to logistics operations and product shoots.

In addition to the Giglio.com business, the Giglio family independently operates five physical boutiques in Palermo, Italy — a business that began in 1965.

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