Editor’s Note
**Editor’s Note:** While the pandemic has shuttered many luxury jewelers, San Marino’s Marlù is defying the trend. The affordable costume jewelry brand, founded by the Fabbri sisters, is expanding with new mono-brand stores in four major Italian cities and enhancing its omnichannel experience with online booking and contactless purchasing.
While renowned jewelry stores are suffering from the crisis caused by the pandemic, fewer famous brands are expanding. Is it possible? Against the current is Marlù of San Marino (a small state in central Italy), a company that sells prêt-à-porter jewelry and costume jewelry made of colored and worked steel. The super affordable jewelry brand created by the three sisters Morena, Monica, and Marta Fabbri is opening new mono-brand stores in the heart of the historic centers of four major Italian cities: Milan, Bologna, Bari, and Florence. Not only that: alongside the traditional store, it offers an e-commerce system that allows customers of the 36 Marlù brand stores to book online and buy from their trusted retailer. A way to avoid queues and crowds. Alternatively, they can receive their purchases at home.
To be precise, the new stores are on via Torino in Milan (opening December 4), on via Indipendenza in Bologna (December 14), on via Argiro in Bari (December 14), and on via dei Calzolari in Florence (January 8). Marlù’s mono-brand stores are now located in 12 Italian regions and add to over a thousand points of sale throughout the Italian territory.
“Since March until today, we have lived, like everyone, through great difficulties. The pandemic has radically changed relationships between people, daily life, and all this has also entered the business world. But in our small way, we try to give a signal of confidence in the recovery and invest in the four new openings. We are a reality created by three sisters and, like all women, we are used to facing problems immediately. During the lockdown, we immediately adopted, and also maintained in recent months, forms of remote work, we worked in a network with our partner companies and started a production of health prevention devices, from dispensers to disinfectant gels under the TimeToBeCareful brand, getting companies back on track as in early April.”
To support the stores, Marlù’s mono-brand stores use simple Whatsapp numbers: each customer can book each jewel online at their trusted retailer. Without the limitations of recent months on hours, movements, and openings, the brand’s goal is to keep the relationship with the local store customer alive and constant. You choose the jewels from showcases and catalogs, pick them up in the store without queues or gatherings, or ask to receive them directly at home. Also in this way, it is possible to send gifts to family and friends throughout Italy. Not only that: communication passes primarily through social media, from Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and YouTube. The community brings together Millennials, GenZs, and Baby Boomers, and e-commerce, says Marta Fabbri, has grown by three figures.
