Pitti Uomo collaborates with department store Saks

By

Dominique Muret

Published
Dec 2, 2014

Pitti Uomo is continuing its policy of promoting Made in Italy, in particular, through collaborations with prestigious luxury retailers. In June 2013, the Florence-based trade fair, a global reference for menswear, launched a project with department store Isetan of Shinjuku-Tokyo. The initiative, scheduled for four seasons, comes to an end at the next edition of Pitti Uomo in January 2015.

"Next year we will be announcing a new collaboration with American department store Saks, and we hope to multiply this type of collaboration with other chains," Gaetano Marzotto, President of Pitti Immagine, the company that organises the Florence trade fairs, revealed to FashionMag .

"International distribution is in the process of changing and now follows new types of logic. Department stores are less important than big shopping malls, which rent or sell them spaces. The new challenge for companies is to manage these spaces. While for smaller brands this is more difficult," he explained.

To help smaller labels bearing the Made in Italy manufacturing excellence, who alone do not carry enough weight, Pitti Uomo plans to offer these chains its own selection of brands to participate in the trade fair, to allow them to present themselves together in a privileged context.

In the case of the initiative with Isetan, one hundred plus menswear brands were thus chosen and their collections unveiled at Pitti Uomo and presented shortly after the end of the trade fair in the Japanese department store with customers given the exclusive possibility to pre-order items before going officially on sale.