In London, at the top of the Piccadilly Arcade, is a small, curved-glass-fronted shop, a profumeria called Santa Maria Novella. For those who enter, it is a little taste of Italy, Florence to be precise, where Santa Maria Novella was founded in 1221 by Dominican Friars.
Inside you’ll find an exquisite range of perfumes, skincare and other luxury products, a sliver of the experience to be found in its flagship store in Florence. There you’ll find tourists on a pilgrimage to an 800-year-old business that encapsulates the Italian skill of presenting products as elevated creative culture. It’s why few leave Florence without a Santa Maria Novella product, however tiny, tucked inside their suitcase.
In many ways this ancient and venerated business is a template for how Italian brands present their products as creative culture rather than mere goods. Heritage and storytelling are tools to demonstrate provenance, together with craftsmanship to signify value and place to create emotional attachment.
Such a strategy does three things. Firstly, it generates credibility; secondly, it provides meaning; and finally, it emphasises exclusivity. When these combine, you begin to understand how brands justify premium pricing whilst also attracting strong customer loyalty.
If Italians are born into a culture with a rich history of creativity, you may think they have an unfair advantage over designers, jewellers or artisans from other countries. Perhaps they do. Fortunately, Italian luxury brands do not hide how they promote their work. In this respect, Italy is remarkably generous in sharing the secrets of its creative business success.
If you’re looking to grow your business, Italy is an open door to discover what works and why.
This article explores some of those tactics, the brands using them and how you might do the same.
Why Italian brands trust in heritage and storytelling
Heritage is not only about history. It is also about territory, regional culture, and local tradition. These elements help differentiate products at a national or international level. Storytelling is a proven way to achieve this aim because the richer and more interesting the story, the more memorable it is.
For Versace, the mythological Medusa logo tells stories of sensuality, power, and beauty. For Gucci, a decorative bee on a sneaker is not just a design feature; it’s an introduction to tales of nobility, industry, and continuity.
When hand-stitching techniques are passed down through generations, they become part of local folklore. When a motif is drawn from Sicilian folk art, it carries an exotic tale. These are simple narratives that link the historic with the contemporary, and the curious with the bygone.
Heritage acts as a trust mechanism. Consumers who pay several thousand pounds for an item do so because they trust the product’s authenticity. The lineage of that product and those who produce it is implicit in that sense of trust and removes the fear of transactional risk, i.e. fakery. Marketing, sales, and client experience must then work together to communicate this so that brand identity and reputation are in sync.
The “Made in Italy” reputation is shorthand for quality, aesthetic sophistication and artisanal know‑how. Think of it as cultural capital, and commercially successful brands know how to profit from this.
Consider two leather handbags. At first glance, they appear similar in size and design. On inspection, imagine a buyer discovers that one of them has an embossed motif and uses a tooling technique unique to a Florentine bottega (workshop) with a colourful 100-year-old family history.
In contrast, the buyer learns that the other handbag, despite the obvious quality of the craftsmanship, is made in a little-known town and by a bottega with no family history. The buyer quickly sees the first handbag as more desirable because of its provenance and heritage. The second handbag, because it has fewer emotional attributes, is less desirable.
Technically, there is little difference between the two handbags, but because of the perceived value of the former, it commands the premium price. In this way, heritage and storytelling combine to make some objects more culturally desirable than others.
The role of place as brand identity
We take comfort knowing that champagne comes from the province of Champagne in northeastern France or that Stilton cheese must legally come from the English counties of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Nottinghamshire. Making the consumer aware of this is an important marketing strategy.
If you live in Florence, it is part of your everyday life. But if you live in Kuala Lumpur or Shanghai, Florence has an exotic appeal not only because of its associations with Renaissance art, design and the Medici family, but because it is geographically so far away. When products are packaged against such a backdrop, they are perceived to have elevated status.
There are plenty of places in the world with a fine leather tradition, but Florence, because of all the other things associated with the city, is frequently perceived as the producer of the finest leather goods.
Milan has a wonderful reputation for tailoring, but then so does London’s Savile Row. However, London is not seen as a global fashion capital, nor does it have such a strong craft tradition or textile heritage. Historically, Milan benefited from the Silk Road, as imports from the East arrived in Venice, and over the centuries, this grew.
Today, many of the world’s leading fashion houses are there, and where even an insignificant buttonhole becomes a ‘Milanese buttonhole’, something distinct to notice and admire.
In this context, “Italian” is not just a geographical label but an identity cue that signals style, heritage and continuity.
This is something that small fashion labels like Rifo can tap into. Rifo makes clothes from recycled clothing and, being based in Prato, just north of Florence, it knows the value of being a Tuscan brand and coming from a town with a tradition of recycling clothing. What they do and where they come from are interdependent on who they are and why they are worth spending money on.
Family and place are equally interdependent. None more so than Ferragamo in Florence, founded by Salvatore in 1927 and which today is still a family-run business. Tod’s (TOD’S Group) comes from Sant’Elpidio in the Marche region, Brunello Cucinelli from Solomeo in Umbria and Max Mara (Max Mara Fashion Group) from Reggio Emilia in Emilia-Romagna, all towns and regions with marketable heritage. All remain family-controlled, even if the ownership has been diluted by private investment.
Family denotes continuity and trust, essential ingredients for any brand looking to widen its international appeal.
How regional craftsmanship means human proof of value
Place becomes more potent when it is associated with a particular craft, especially if it communicates a rare and skilled competence.
In 1975, Bottega Veneta introduced the intrecciato weave to make leather wallets and bags supple and sturdy. When the founders began making luxury leather goods in 1966, the sewing machines were no match for dense animal hide. The solution was to be found by local artisans in the Veneto region in northwestern Italy. Here, they devised an intricate method of weaving slender leather strips, known as fettuce, into a perforated base; a leather working tradition native to Vicenza, where Bottega Veneta was based.
At the time, the intrecciato design was a calling card; today, it is seen as an integral part of the brand, linked to the exquisite regional craftsmanship.
In southern Sicily, DOLCE&GABBANA taps into local craftsmanship. It works with local artisans to apply traditional Sicilian techniques to create black lace, ornate embroidery and raffia work. It openly takes inspiration from the Sicilian carretto, a bright and colourful hand-painted cart. In doing so, it opens the past and reworks it for the present. In this way, the customer gets the best of everything: heritage, storytelling, a sense of place and exceptional craftsmanship.
Italian creative brands excel at acknowledging their past but not in a nostalgic way. When Alessandro Michele was the creative director at Gucci he created a range of baseball caps, each with a different story-laden motif, i.e. a bee. Whilst some saw it as devaluing the brand, others saw it as a way of demonstrating how a brand established in 1921 could appear contemporary and modern.
For luxury brands with a heritage, it is a constant challenge to balance exclusivity with innovation and relevance.
Execution, Execution, Execution
To make a brand memorable and distinct requires excellence in the production of advertising and marketing content. It might be back-lit glamorous models in exotic locations, films of artisans at work in a bottega, close‑up photography or behind‑the‑scenes exhibitions. Whatever the approach, it is the execution that matters.
Luxury, high-end products come with a high-end expectation of what visual content should look, sound and feel like. Those who produce it well make good use of all of the branding and marketing signifiers mentioned above.
Through media, customers begin to understand the time, skill and labour that goes into the making of the product. What is seen as something with a perceived value becomes a product with intrinsic value.
The “Made in Italy” Marketing & Branding Programme
For luxury Italian brands, heritage and storytelling are strategic levers that convert geography, craft and history into a commercial advantage. In a crowded market, these are mechanisms for building trust, meaning and exclusivity.
Such tactics are teachable, which is what the “Made in Italy” programme from Made in Academy does.
“Made in Italy” is a cultural business learning programme for those who own or promote a business in the luxury fashion, design, or artisan sectors and who seek world-class expertise.
It’s an immersion into the branding and marketing of Italian luxury brands, built around fashion, design and craftsmanship. Over six days, you are part of an event that begins in Milan and ends in Florence.
Through our network of contacts, you’ll decode the DNA of Italian creativity, complete project work, network with business leaders and leave with actionable ideas.
You’ll listen to and meet speakers from international brands such as Gucci, Dolce&Gabbana, Balenciaga, etc., as well as Florentine business owners, and professors from Polimoda in Florence.
September and October Events
- 6 – 11 September
- 11 – 16 October
FREE “Made in Italy” Webinar – “An Introduction to Italian Branding and Storytelling”
On Thursday, 11 June at 13.00 GMT / 18:00 MYT, join Made in Academy founders, Joe Pélissier and Vasilis Dimitropoulos, as they share insights into Italian branding and storytelling, and the “Made in Italy” itinerary and programme.