LuisaViaRoma Secures Lease for Manhattan Retail Destination
MILAN — LuisaViaRoma is headed to the U.S. and likely with its first international door.
Leasing advisory firm Mona said Friday that the Italian e-tailer, part of private equity firm Style Capital’s portfolio, has inked a long-term lease for a 7,855-square-foot retail space at 1 Bond Street in Manhattan’s NoHo neighborhood.
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The yearly rent rate stands at $3.2 million, the advisory firm said, and includes the lease of a 5,000-square-foot space on the building’s lower level.
In a statement issued to WWD on Monday LuisaViaRoma confirmed plans to open a store in New York in 2023.
“The move is one of the crucial steps in LuisaViaRoma’s growth and development strategy on an international scale, with the American market increasingly playing a relevant role,” the company said without providing additional details.
Neighboring such retailers as Showfields and Kith and across the street from hip members club Zero Bond, the store would mark LuisaViaRoma’s second outpost globally, flanking the existing unit on Florence’s Via Roma which opened in 1929.
The retailer had already tested the brick-and-mortar waters in Manhattan, opening a pop-up store in 2018 in partnership with Spring Studios and Spring Place.
In 2021, Style Capital invested 130 million euros to acquire a 40 percent stake in the e-tailer aimed at supporting its growth. LuisaViaRoma had turnover of around 230 million euros in 2020.
Since the acquisition, Roberta Benaglia, chief executive officer at Style Capital, cited the expansion of the retailer’s international footprint as among her key priorities. A few months before the deal materialized, LuisaViaRoma had hired Kate Davidson Hudson to oversee its expanded content strategy and launch a magazine particularly geared at the U.S. market.
The e-tailer is helmed by CEO Alessandra Rossi, a Yoox Group (now YNAP) veteran. As part of the deal, Andrea Panconesi, whose grandmother Luisa Jaquin planted the seeds of the family company’s success and was the mastermind behind the retailer’s foray into e-commerce in 1999, serves as chairman.
This article was updated on Dec. 19.
