Italian luxury fashion iceberg meme
It's about brand recognition
This seemingly needs a separate post in lieu of various comments.
The struggle for most brands, and also why I started featuring so many SMEs is that they, like every good business owner should, focus on distribution first. “Brand” is often an afterthought, let alone comms activities like advertising, a FY comms plan, or how to translate what the brand stands for in the mind of its owner, and how they execute their products into a comprehensible strategy, and lead consumers to associate those attributes with it and subsequently think of the brand at the time of purchase.
In fairness, some of these brands are less than ten years old and most of their wholesale accounts are in Asia, which thanks to language barriers means that their presence and brand recognition doesn’t cross-pollinate virtual borders.
On the other hand, brands like Stefano Ricci are incredibly well known among the target demographic and beyond, not just because of the free advertisement it received on the heels of the quiet luxury craze, but because the brand operates OVER 70 RETAIL OUTLETS. Some brands on this list don’t even have that many wholesale accounts.
Most DTC brands still acquire that brand recognition through social media advertising. Which is the most capital intensive way to gain it and the short-lasting one when compared multi-channel media mix.
TLDR - don’t mistake being on top of this list with being a higher quality brand, it’s just meant to show many brands most consumer have rarely if ever heard of unless they “dive” below the surface level of the Italian fashion landscape.