How Andrea Panconesi Turned a Family Business Into a Global Fashion Powerhouse

Long-term success in the nebulous fashion retail space—whether online, brick-and-mortar, or both—of course takes a keen eye and sharp business sense, but these days, it nearly requires a crystal ball to navigate the unpredictable terrain.

In 1999, Panconesi took the LuisaViaRoma ethos and aesthetic worldwide by pioneering into e-commerce. To celebrate a decade on the Internet in 2010, he organized the FIRENZE4EVER event, which assembled a whopping 40 bloggers (or “influencers,” as we would say in 2019) to style their own multi-brand LuisaViaRoma looks.

From the LuisaViaRoma homebase in Florence, the CEO continues to innovate the business in an ever-evolving, tech-driven industry. This year marks two decades of trailblazing on the Internet and a milestone 90th anniversary of the LuisaViaRoma legacy. Obviously, not just any party will do, so Panconesi and LuisaViaRoma are partnering with another industry vanguard, Carine Roitfeld, for a landmark sartorial takeover: the first official CR Runway show.

To find out more, we spoke with Panconesi about what lessons he learned from his grandmother, where he’s taking LuisaViaRoma into the next 90 years, and how the family matriarch would feel about the CR Runway if she were here today.

What lessons did you learn or advice you received from your grandmother that you still use at LuisaViaRoma today?
“Well [laughs], she was an old lady when I was young. She was a French lady. She refused to speak Italian because she thought French was more elegant. She used to tell me, ‘Make yourself up a good name and then you can rest,’ which basically means, ‘Invest in the brand,’ in business words. That’s what we’re doing: investing in our brand, LuisaViaRoma.”

How did your hands-on, on-the-ground experience starting as a merchandiser and buyer help you in running the family business today?
“With the web, our company—in 20 years—did ten times more than what had been done in three generations. The web changed our company from being one window on via Roma to being a window on the world. Our purpose is still the same: to satisfy the needs of our most demanding clients because information about fashion is so much more broad and universal. Before, very few people were passionate about fashion. Now, the whole world speaks the same language of fashion. The very basic foundation is also the same: the knowledge of the buyers working with me for so many years. They know what to buy to satisfy the needs of our clients. This is our number-one priority and what differentiates us from the department store and the monobrand retailer. As an independent multi-brand e-commerce retailer, we’re free to buy what we believe are the best selections from the best designers in the world.”

You took LuisaViaRoma online in 1999. How did you know it was time and what was that e-commerce learning curve like for you?
“I didn’t know about the web at all. Just because of my curiosity, I wanted to learn everything about it as quickly as possible. As soon as I realized the potential of the web—that it could put me in touch with all our clients at the same time, all over the world—I just put myself in it and started investing. First, in engineers to write our website from scratch. At that time, imagine: Google [just emerged from the beta stage] and Facebook arrived in 2004. So staffing, especially in Italy, was zero. In Italy, the infrastructure did not exist at that time. Nobody was accustomed to buying by catalog, so there was no business in Italy. But Italy became our first market.”

Under you, LuisaViaRoma has continued pioneering in e-commerce and integrating social media marketing. What is your approach to consistently keeping ahead of the tech and retail curve?
“It’s the curiosity. Curiosity moves me and my company. Whatever is new and not known. It’s a new adventure and luckily we are a small company, so we can still pursue any dream that we like without asking permission from anybody. Then we move very fast.”

What brought you together first with Roitfeld and how did you decide to partner for the anniversary celebration?
“We met the first time through friends and we decided to support the publication of her magazine in Paris. We launched a big party last Paris Fashion Week, and we were speaking the same language. We liked each other from the first moment and we decided to go ahead with this second adventure to produce the very first multi-brand fashion show that’s ever been done at this level. I don’t recall it in 40 years of my activity that anything similar has ever been done on this scale with 90 models.”

How do you envision the runway show celebrating the 90-year history and enduring influence of LuisaViaRoma?

“We are talking about fashion, so fashion shows are a natural way to talk about our passion. Putting 50 of the best designers in the world together in the same fashion show is something exciting for anybody who loves fashion. It’s a dream. Of course, it’s a very, very difficult task to achieve. Only one person in the world, I think, has ever done it, and it’s Carine, because she has the experience. She has the talent. She has the knowledge. She has the organization to put everything together. So that’s why we partnered together.”

What fashion moment in the ‘90s has been most influential to you and your career?

“[Italian fashion] started very slowly in the ‘60s in Florence after Giovanni Battista Giorgini put on [the country’s] very first multi-brand fashion show [in 1951] in his home. It grew in the ‘70s and then accelerated in the ‘80s and ‘90s, which was the time of Claude Montana and Mugler. It was very exciting. That’s why we decided to do this big event in Florence—to tell this story, to celebrate the 90th anniversary of LuisaViaRoma, but also to remind people that Florence is where everything started.”

Where do you see yourself leading LuisaViaRoma into the next 20, 90 years?
“I’m all about looking at the next step and the future, rather than the past. I’m happy to do a celebration to make sure everybody understands the history of Luisa, which is important, but I’m also interested in what’s going to happen next. We will be focusing on the global market: the Far East, Middle East, Southeast Asia, South America, Africa, and India. Of course, artificial intelligence is something that we’re working on now. Whatever comes up in the market that we don’t know, that we are very curious about, we are going to experience.”

What part of the 90-year celebration and runway show do you think your grandmother would most enjoy?
“I’m sure she would really love and enjoy the whole thing. She was a very elegant lady. She was a hat designer in Paris in the late 1800s, so she was always wearing a hat—no matter where she was going. She would have never gone out of the house without her hat and her purse. She was very much focused on the accessories, so she would love to see all the accessories.”