In the final moments of a whirlwind tour of Italy including Milan’s Salone del Mobile and the press opening of the Venice Biennale, I received an invitation to visit The Mall Firenze, a shopping destination outside of Florence. The Tuscany region continues to live and breathe its mercantilist reputation, one that the Florentine people etched throughout much of the Renaissance. While the northern city of Milan serves as the commercial capital of luxury fashion in Italy, a number of brands still call Florence home: Ferragamo, Pucci, and Cavalli chief among them, while Gucci continues to maintain its historic offices at the Casellina.. It’s a perfect ecosystem for The Mall Firenze. Categorizing itself as a luxury experience, the “experiential” shopping experience is the latest evolution in a complex luxury shopping market – perhaps one that can weather the storm of changes that are changing the way that retail players and consumers operate.
As a shopaholic myself who obsesses over discounts and playing the game of resale, I would have enjoyed the visit even without the extracurriculars planned by their team, who can also help coordinate reservations, tours, and hotel stays in the city of Florence itself. From the discounts across the boutiques to a few pieces from Bottega and Balenciaga that I’m fairly confident were never sold in the US, I made my wonderful personal shopping and experience guide insane by speed walking across the property and trying to hunt down the best deals. Aperol spritzes and pesto gnocchi fueled my drive.
As the hours flew by, I couldn’t help but stare at the beautiful landscape around me. Just on the hill behind the southern border of the property sits a grand villa, currently abandoned but with an evident history, that tells the story of several generations of Tuscan culture. The short drive from Florence center itself is filled with these slices of life; these hills provided both economic and defensive importance for the Etruscans. It’s easy to fall into their splendor; on the day of my visit, a beautiful fog rose out of the distance. It’s difficult to divorce my visit from this context, feeling like the contemporary experience is an extension of the past. The Mall Firenze is a new evolution of the Italian market, built to last and proudly continuing the Florentine tradition of excellence.
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It’s easy to forget the state of the luxury industry, and the way that The Mall Luxury Outlets plays into (and defies) in our current moment. Consumers are looking for value. The Real Real, one of the world’s largest resellers of luxury goods and resale tech strategy, reached profitability last year after several years of expansion. With over 37 million members, and a reported ten thousand new items a day (a large portion of them handbags and leather goods), the website fulfills and speaks to the desire for high quality items at an advantageous price. The downside to online retail, however, is that it lends itself to a detachment from reality, which creates questions of authenticity and the distrust of products that depend on fit and feel.
The Mall Firenze boasts over a dozen luxury retailers who are offering current and past season collections at a large discount. Each brand owns and operates their own store with often hidden procedures behind which seasons and products end up on their shelves. The more obvious appeal is the tactile one: the ability to feel the incredible quality that we as shoppers associate with luxury products. This also alleviates the fear of fake goods that comes so often with discount shopping online.
Giorgio Motta, General Manager of The Mall Firenze, which has another location in Liguria’s San Remo, notes that their customer base (and perhaps the luxury shopper in general) is not motivated by discount alone, remarking that their audience is “…looking for something that can amaze and surprise them.” The Mall’s answer to this question is a series of encounters and engagement of the senses, creating a robust sense of touristic shopping that includes fine dining, group activities outside of the boutiques, and a premium concierge service; shoppers can have all of their purchases held for hand delivery at the conclusion of your visit, among other aspects of a luxury experience that seem to have faded from the way boutiques function elsewhere. Out of a broad selection of guest experiences, the Firenze location offers private cooking and cocktail-making classes, perfume creation, and a list of spa treatments. These moments punctuate and remake the typical process of shopping. Shop until noon before a lunch and deep-tissue massage, and relax further with pursuing Gucci handbags. It’s the perfect day for many.
The Mall’s broadening of how we shop – and more specifically, the shopping experience of tourists coming from across the globe – is an intelligent strategy in a retail market that is starting to stumble. Many experts are noting a general slowing in retail sales, leading to a general pessimism across the luxury fashion industry. Not so for The Mall, which opened its San Remo location in 2019 and continues to expand its portfolio of brands while noting growing numbers of shoppers at both sites. Although it’s impossible to determine what exactly is leading to the retail center’s success, the padding of the shopping experience and the existence of an internal Tourism Marketing team stand out as points of distinction.
There’s also something to be said of capitalizing on younger shoppers, a category that is often labeled “aspirational”. In their number and high level of brand awareness, young people are a formidable category in the retail experience. Millennials and Gen Z are utilizing online platforms and social media for luxury purchases, but are also searching for curated, limited items and engaging in a more experiential approach to luxury. The discount and rarefied environment of the outlet model, in which the buyer is tasked with discovering a special item from a span of seasons, is thus extremely appealing for the younger shopper. More simply put, the Mall Firenze creates multigenerational appeal that serves a wide range of shopper profiles.
The Mall Firenze is innovative in design and experience. One would be wise to add in a stop in a next trip to Florence. Or, if you’re like me and addicted to the rush of a sale, it’s worth planning your next vacation around — a departure from the mundane process of the listless high streets of Milan and Paris, and a visit that is sure to result in an incredible find.