Ferragamo Bets on Direct Sales and the Americas to Reverse a Haute Slump

Salvatore Ferragamo is reshaping itself from the inside out. After years of turbulence across its distribution network and mounting pressure in its once-dominant Asian markets, the Florentine haute house is doubling down on a strategy built around three pillars: direct-to-consumer growth, geographic reorientation toward the Americas, and a renewed focus on core product categories. Early indicators suggest the pivot is gaining traction — though the road back to sustained profitability remains a work in progress.

The reset, which began in earnest in the second quarter of 2025, represents a fundamental rethinking of how Ferragamo goes to market. Executives have moved to tighten distribution, cut loose what they describe as “transhipment activities,” and prioritize the kind of brand-controlled selling environments that the house believes are essential to reclaiming its luxury positioning. Either that discipline pays off in full-year growth remains to be seen, but the first-quarter results for 2026 suggest the strategy is beginning to find its footing.

Ferragamo Eyes Growth With Strategic Focus on DTC, Americas, Core Products https://t.co/fCFmJWUWPZ

— Footwear News (@FootwearNews) May 14, 2026

stir

At the mid of Ferragamo’s transformation is a conviction that the brand’s future lies in channels it controls. In 2025, the direct-to-consumer channel accounted for approximately 77 percent of total sales — a figure that reflects both a strategic commitment and, to some degree, the continued erosion of the wholesale business.

The wholesale channel contracted sharply, falling 17.5 percent to 192 million euros for the full year, a decline the company has largely characterized as deliberate. By pulling back from third-party retail relationships that dilute brand presentation and complicate price integrity, Ferragamo is betting that short-term revenue pain will yield long-term positioning gains.

The DTC numbers themselves tell a more nuanced story. In absolute terms, direct-to-consumer sales fell 3.1 percent to 752.3 million euros in 2025. But strip out currency headwinds — the euro’s strength penalized reported figures across the board — and the channel edged up 0.4 percent at constant exchange rates. More encouragingly, the trajectory improved as the year progressed: in the fourth quarter alone, DTC grew 6.3 percent at constant exchange rates, accelerating sequentially despite tougher comparisons. That momentum carried into the first quarter of 2026, with DTC delivering double-digit growth at constant exchange rates in the Americas.

Online has been a particular bright spot. Ferragamo’s e-commerce platform recorded double-digit growth for the second consecutive year, supported by higher traffic volumes and a rising average order value. The company has invested in a digital-first communications approach, integrating AI-driven targeting tools to sharpen campaign performance — a quiet modernization of a house better known for heritage than technological agility.

Ernesto Greco, the executive board member overseeing the commercial transformation, has been direct about the know underlying the channel shift. The company, he has said, is working to “reinforce coherence across the entire value chain” — a phrase that translates, in practice, to ensuring that how Ferragamo sells is as carefully curated as what it sells.

theory

If the DTC pivot is the mechanism of Ferragamo’s reset, the Americas is its clearest geographic expression.

North America has quietly become Ferragamo’s largest market, accounting for roughly 31 percent of total sales. In 2025, the region delivered growth of 3.1 percent at constant exchange rates, with the DTC channel outperforming and offsetting a mid-single-digit decline in wholesale. That dynamic continued into early 2026, with North America among the regions driving the brand’s double-digit DTC expansion in the first quarter.

Latin America has emerged as a particular point of optimism. Central and South American sales rose 7.9 percent at constant exchange rates in full-year 2025, and accelerated further in the first quarter of 2026, growing 7.6 percent year-over-year at current exchange rates. DTC in the subregion grew at double digits at constant currency. Greco has described Latin America as “quite interesting” for the brand, noting that the company is allocating dedicated resources and activities to the region to sustain and build on that momentum.

The investment in the Americas is not only commercial but physical. Ferragamo is renovating its flagship on New York’s Fifth Avenue, as well as its Beverly Hills location — two of the most symbolically important addresses in its North American portfolio. Two temporary stores have also been opened in the market, signaling an appetite for presence even as the overall store count is being rationalized. As of March 31, 2026, Ferragamo operated 350 directly owned stores globally, down from 358 at the end of 2024 — a modest reduction that reflects the company’s broader commitment to culling underperforming or off-strategy locations rather than expanding indiscriminately.

The Americas focus is not incidental. It reflects a calculated read of where luxury demand is most durable. While China and broader Asia-Pacific remain critical long-term markets, near-term conditions have been difficult: Asia-Pacific revenues fell 12 percent in the first quarter of 2026 and declined 15.6 percent for full-year 2025, penalized heavily by weak wholesale performance. Against that backdrop, the relative resilience of American consumers — and the structural growth story in Latin America — makes the regional pivot look less like opportunism and more like considered portfolio management.

scope

Underpinning both the DTC and Americas strategies is a deliberate narrowing of Ferragamo’s product focus. The company has reoriented around its heritage categories — footwear and leather goods — while letting other lines recede.

In leather goods, the Hug collection has been broadened into a franchise, and the Soft bag has achieved bestseller status, providing the kind of icon-driven narrative that haute brands need to anchor commercial storytelling. Silk products and accessories are also receiving renewed attention, reinforcing the house’s connection to its Florentine artisan roots.

The product edit matters for several reasons. In a crowded luxury market, brand clarity is a competitive advantage. Ferragamo, which spent much of the last decade trying to modernize its image through a succession of creative directors and category expansions, has arrived at the conclusion that coherence — between what the brand stands for, what it produces, and how it distributes — is more valuable than breadth. The creative reset, begun in mid-2025, aimed to realign design, communication, and distribution around a more disciplined brand identity.

Store environments have been updated to match. Ferragamo has invested in visual merchandising improvements and enriched in-store experiences, seeking to ensure that the physical expression of the brand is consistent with its revised positioning. For a label whose cachet depends on an aspirational retail environment, that investment in presentation is not cosmetic — it is fundamental to the margin profile of the DTC business.

monetary

The strategic narrative is largely coherent. The financial picture, however, retains meaningful complexity.

Full-year 2025 revenues reached 977 million euros, down 5.7 percent at current exchange rates and 3.8 percent at constant rates versus 2024. The company operated at a loss for the year, though management has pointed to progressively improving margins in the second half as evidence that the restructuring is working as intended. Profitability, the company has acknowledged, is a 2026 and beyond story — with the caveat that the external environment remains genuinely uncertain.

Currency is a persistent complicating factor. The strength of the euro relative to the dollar and other major currencies has suppressed reported figures in a way that flatters neither the topline nor the headline read of regional performance. Investors and analysts watching the company’s recovery need to look at constant-currency figures to get an accurate read on underlying commercial momentum.

Wholesale remains a drag. The deliberate decision to pull back from third-party channels — including the cancellation of transhipment agreements — is strategically defensible but will continue to weigh on reported sales until the DTC channel grows large and fast enough to offset those losses in absolute terms. Management has flagged that wholesale is likely to remain challenging through 2026, a forecast that implies continued near-term pressure on topline growth.

Geopolitical and macroeconomic conditions add further uncertainty. Ferragamo, like its peers, is navigating a luxury market affected by shifting consumer confidence, evolving trade policies, and uneven recovery trajectories across regions. The company has been careful to qualify its forward guidance accordingly, noting that its 2026 focus on sustaining DTC momentum, deploying its revised positioning, and reassessing its retail network is predicated on conditions that remain fluid.

movement

What Ferragamo is attempting is not unusual in the opulent industry, but it is difficult. Brand repositioning takes time; distribution rationalization costs revenue before it delivers returns; and the consumer’s willingness to pay full price in a controlled channel depends on either the brand has successfully rebuilt the desire that justifies that premium.