Gucci mother Kering’s online sales gain weight

Gucci is one of the biggest luxury brands in the world. According to BrandZ, it was the fourth most valuable label in the luxury segment in 2019 on a global scale. When talking about the Italian market only, which has a long tradition in the luxury fashion and accessories industry, the brand based in picturesque Florence has been leading the ranking of the most valuable brands for years, according to BrandZ’s brand value analyses. With its mother company Kering, S.A., Gucci has one thing in common: Both started off decades ago as producers, respectively traders of convenience products, and are now dedicated (almost) exclusively to an exclusive clientele. Kering, S.A., a multinational corporation based in France, owns several luxury brands – next to Gucci for example Yves Saint Laurent and Bottega Veneta, just to name a few. Hit hard by the wide-ranging store closures in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, Kering S.A. – which is first and foremost a stationary retail business – saw a substantial loss of 17.5% in total revenue in 2020. eCommerce sales, on the other hand, increased remarkably, registering a year-on-year growth of an impressive 67.5%. In light of this positive example of a revenue shift towards online retail, it is time to take a look at the performance of Kering S.A.’s main online stores, as analyzed by ecommerceDB.com:

Based on net sales amounts in 2020, Kering S.A.’s three biggest online stores are gucci.com, the web presence of Yves Saint Laurent ysl.com, and balenciaga.com. All three stores registered an impressive net sales growth in the pandemic year 2020. While gucci.com was by far the best-performing online store of Kering S.A. in 2020 based on net sales, generating a total of €832 million, it was beaten by ysl.com in terms of growth. ysl.com registered a year-on-year net sales growth of 75% in 2020, leading substantially before gucci.com with an increase of 61%, and balenciaga.com with a plus of 33% in net sales, compared to 2019. The online store of Yves Saint Laurent is likely to outpace balenciaga.com if this development continues. While the two stores still generated a comparable amount of net sales of around €90 million in 2019, ysl.com is going to lead by a substantial margin over balenciaga.com in 2021, as forecast by ecommerceDB.com. gucci.com’s role as the Kering S.A. online top dog is still far from being challenged, however. Following another solid double-digit year-on-year growth, gucci.com is likely to pass the €1 billion mark in 2021, as ecommerceDB.com projects. Although Kering S.A. already saw some relief in the second half of 2020, following the disastrous slump in sales at the beginning of the year, the general shift from offline to online shopping in the global retail economy is likely to drive online sales further. Maybe eCommerce will make up a much larger share in Kering’s sales in the years to come.

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July 2021