We all know that markups in luxury fashion can be ridiculously high. The journey from the factory to floor, gets items to be priced at higher than they cost.

Now E-commerce site Italic is betting that removing the branding and the mark-up will prove a hit with consumers. A big bet indeed!

The start-up’s members-only marketplace, which launched last Thursday, allows manufacturers that create products for luxury brands to sell directly to consumers without the LOGOs adding markups. Shoppers who pay a $120 annual membership fee can choose from a selection of unbranded luxury goods, from bags and wallets to prescription eyewear and leather jackets, produced by the same factories that count names like Prada, Givenchy, Celine and Burberry among their clients.

The company has raised $13 million in funding, from various top end investors. Over 100,000 people joined a waiting list to be notified when membership opens, with signups initially limited to the US, said company founder Jeremy Cai.

Upon launching, the platform will have nearly 60 styles live on the site, with a view to double this number by the end of the year. However, customers won’t find unbranded versions of the Gucci Dionysus bag or any of the latest Celine creations. All products sold on Italic will be unique and exclusive to the platform to avoid infringing on brands’ intellectual property / copyrighted designs.

The start-up joins a growing number of brands, including Everlane and Warby Parker, which provide a premium-feeling, minimally branded product at relatively affordable prices. Within the luxury sector, high-end retailers, including Mr Porter, Joseph and MatchesFashion, are expanding their private label collections, which tend to be priced below standard luxury fare.

Italic goes one step further, selling items that lack even the private label branding. The marketplace will instead focus on providing the infrastructure — from marketing, design and warehousing to customer support — to enable manufacturers to sell products directly. The company will take a commission on sales.

“We essentially do everything that brands do and more, but we do it for the manufacturers,” Cai said.

For example, Italic’s merchandising team will work with factories that have product and pattern libraries to tweak existing designs so they don’t mimic products already on the market. Italic also has two designers, alumni of Armani and Calvin Klein, to work with manufacturers that don’t have in-house creative teams.

“We are very careful about every single product that we sell being originally designed, you won’t find an exact product like it in the market,” Cai said. “We want breadth and coverage of a lot of different styles.”

Branding can be a powerful tool, especially in a sector like luxury, where purchases are emotional rather than practical. That’s especially true for “statement” products, like handbags.

“People buy branded products to be reassured of the quality and style of the item and also for their projected image: they somehow communicate to other people the style, sophistication and preferences of their owner,” said Mario Ortelli, managing partner of luxury advisors Ortelli & Co. “You want to feel and show that you are part of the brand story.”

But Cai doesn’t anticipate the manufacturers on Italic’s marketplace competing head to head with luxury brands.

“For a person who is going to buy a Gucci bag, we are never going to win them over with unbranded product,” he said. “That doesn’t mean in some avenue of their life, they wouldn’t be open to switching up their sheets or maybe a shirt, or a leather jacket, where they actually don’t like a logo on there.”

As well as geographical expansion and international shipping, the platform’s short term goals include expanding into product categories like activewear and beauty. The focus will remain on luxury, Cai said.

“The reason we want to start in luxury is because we can say to the customer: we can make premium product effectively and replace a lot of your aspirational shopping,” he said.

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Nike's decision comes months after H&M closed down outlets in South Africa following protests against the infamous ad that featured a black child with a hoodie with the text “coolest monkey in the jungle.” Race remains a highly sensitive issue in South Africa more than two decades after the end of apartheid.

While the company didn’t comment on the temporary closure, it released a statement saying the firm “opposes discrimination and has a long-standing commitment to diversity, inclusion and respect.”

In the online video that went viral last week, a white man expressed his appreciation for the beach he was visiting by commenting that there weren’t any black people to be seen — using an offensive racial slur. He was promptly fired from the food producer that is owned by his family, Eyewitness News reported, adding that his wife works for Nike.

The stores have reopened as of Friday last week.

Gucci is introducing a series of global, pop-up stores, designed to create even more reasons for customers to shop across the year. This is especially in regions where luxury brand may not already have a physical outpost. Target destinations over the next year include Chengdu, Sao Paulo, Taipei, Bangkok, Moscow, Mexico City, Dubai and many more across Europe, Latin America, the US, Middle East and Asia Pacific regions.

The Pop-Ups are called “Gucci Pin” and will each be open an average of five weeks. In some cases, shops will open and close over the course of a year in the same city or location, dependent on different occasions. Digital content will play a major role in keeping the customers hooked.

The first shop opened on November 5 in Hong Kong, and will be followed by Fukuoka, Seongnam, Paris and Denver in the first wave of openings throughout the month.

Gucci Chief Executive Marco Bizzarri said that the Gucci Pin stores will allow the brand to reach different consumer segments than it can with its brick and mortar stores. “We are therefore looking at Gucci Pin as a new map for new territories, combining an immersive digital activation to further enhance the physical experience,” he said.

The idea is simple, pop-up shops will feed the growing demand for constant newness, especially among younger consumers buying entry-level price point items plus with Limited edition runs creating a sense of urgency.

This strategy is especially important because Gucci’s sales growth have slowed down this year. The brand saw revenue increase 11 percent on a comparable basis in the third quarter of 2019, compared to 35 percent in the same period the prior year. But Gucci is still on track to reach its goal of €10 billion in annual revenue in the coming years.

The first wave is all about gifts for the holiday season. The second, opening in early 2020, will celebrate the Chinese New Year, later in the year, there will be a “psychedelic” theme, with products designed to reflect the concepts.

Asia is Gucci’s largest and fastest-growing region, so it’s no surprise that many of the first stores to open are in the region.

Looking forward to whats in store for Dubai and the rest of the Middle East.

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“She has something very real [about her], and here we wanted to take that reality to a new level. I felt that, on a classical shoot, we couldn’t get that depth.” she said. Ramsay-Levi seems determined to establish: the personality of the women she is designing for.