Loro Piana's first store in Latin America, at Shopping Cidade Jardim, São Paulo. Photo: Loro Piana / JHSF, press image released for media use (divulgação).
On 5 November Loro Piana, the Italian cashmere house owned by LVMH, opened its first store in Latin America: 304 square metres on the ground floor of Shopping Cidade Jardim, in São Paulo. The press called it the brand's official entry into the Brazilian market.
The store is not the interesting part. The door is. Loro Piana runs the shop itself, in an exclusive partnership with JHSF, the Brazilian luxury group that owns the mall. A few metres away, other European brands sell under the same roof through a very different arrangement: the landlord runs their stores for them.
The full article explains the two ways European luxury brands enter Brazil through its two big landlords, JHSF and Iguatemi, why that door exists, why doors have closed before, and the questions a European brand should ask before signing an exclusivity.