LuisaViaRoma is recognized for its upscale assortment of designer apparel, accessories, and home decor, establishing itself as an esteemed Italian luxury fashion merchant. If you’d like to start your own marketplace like LuisaViaRoma, you’re facing a buy vs build decision. So before you decide to build it in-house on top of Spree open-source, consider using Vendo, which is a marketplace SaaS. Go live, start selling, iterate.
Build vs Buy a marketplace?
The benefits of using open-source are numerous, including complete control and the ability to customize freely. However, these perks come with significant expenses. Crafting a complete functional marketplace solution is a lengthy and costly process, often spanning months or even years. This is a lesson we’ve drawn from various marketplace projects.
Unless you’ve secured a hefty amount of funding, opting for a pre-built, comprehensive marketplace solution like Vendo is a wiser choice, as advised by someone who has extensive experience in billing clients for marketplace development.
Back to the LuisaViaRoma marketplace case study
LuisaViaRoma, an iconic luxury fashion retailer, has established itself as a significant player in the high-end e-commerce market. Founded in 1930 by Luisa Jaquin in Florence, Italy, the platform began as a small hat shop and evolved into a global destination for luxury fashion.
Its digital transformation has been key to its success, with a focus on curating a selection of luxury fashion and lifestyle products from renowned designers and emerging talents.
The platform is known for its immersive shopping experience, offering high-resolution images, comprehensive product descriptions, and editorial content to engage shoppers. LuisaViaRoma’s global reach, multilingual support, and localized content cater to a diverse international customer base.
The platform stands out for its innovative collaborations with luxury brands and designers, offering exclusive and limited-edition items, and has embraced sustainability initiatives, offering sustainable and ethical fashion products.
Under the new leadership of CEO Tommaso Maria Andorlini, LuisaViaRoma is poised for further growth and international expansion. Andorlini, with over 20 years of experience in the fashion industry, plans to open the first international LuisaViaRoma store in New York in 2024.
His focus is on product expansion, operational efficiency, and implementing new technologies to enhance sustainability initiatives. Last year, LuisaViaRoma reported sales of approximately 250 million euros, with over 90% of revenue generated online, and aims to surpass 300 million euros by 2023.
LuisaViaRoma’s success is also attributed to its strong performance in the Italian market, where sales have increased by 40% in the past two years.
The platform has expanded its brand offerings to over 600 luxury brands and has collaborated with Vestiaire Collective, allowing clients to trade previously worn fashion items for credits on the e-commerce platform. Under Andorlini’s leadership, LuisaViaRoma aims to continue its growth trajectory and establish itself as a leading player in the digital and fashion sectors.
How to emulate LuisaViaRoma marketplace success?
In striving for success comparable to LuisaViaRoma, plan to launch your marketplace expediently, within weeks instead of months. Assess the alignment of your product catalog with your audience’s needs and modify your customer acquisition plans based on real results.
Test the market waters before diving into building it yourself.
Here’s what you’d be getting with a Vendo free trial:
- Book a marketplace demo call: We’ll set up your demo marketplace and populate it with products, so you could give it a try and start selling in 14 days
- Customize your Storefront: Use the drag & drop page builder or custom CSS
- Onboard Brands: Invite your brands or choose brands from our catalog
- Select Products: Curate products and collections manually or automate it
- Embed products: Make your content, newsletters, social media shoppable
- Get Paid: Get paid as soon as products are shipped by the brands
- End-to-end automation: brands sync, fulfillment, payouts, invoicing, taxes
When you’ve tried all that and it works, start thinking about building your own, custom-made marketplace project based on Spree Commerce. First, by decoupling the storefront and going headless with Vendo marketplace API, and later with your own backend, if you decide you really need it. Just lift and shift the storefront.
Nobody has to know what’s under the hood, right?
