Italian handbag brand Serapian is officially making landfall in the U.S. this year. The 70-year-old Milanese label, regarded by Italian consumers for its classic handmade designs sold at relatively affordable prices, has signed an LLC partnership that will enable it to jump-start retail, wholesale and e-commerce operations Stateside.
The first phase of this endeavor — a men’s wholesale partnership with Barneys New York — is already under way with styles available in eight of the department store’s doors, as well as the Barneys Web site.
Phase two, Serapian’s first U.S. stand-alone store, will open at 204 North Rodeo Drive next month. The 900-square-foot space, designed by Milanese design firm Laboratorio 83, is expected to open by mid-April.
“We are doing a very handmade product, I would say an intelligent one, and [by coming to the U.S.] we are focusing on a market that, I think, can understand Serapian’s work,” Giovanni Nodari, Serapian’s marketing manager, said of the expansion. “Americans’ taste and knowledge of the Made in Italy brand is pretty high.”
Serapian, founded by Stefano Serapian and Gina Flori in 1945 and now presided over by their son Arda Serapian, employs 100 artisans in-house to create its bag range. These technicians also manufacture leather goods for major European fashion houses, the names of which Nodari declined to specify. He noted that two are from France and another two from Italy.
“We do everything by ourselves, which means we can assure top quality even better than other brands, but at 30 to 35 percent lower prices. We like to prove that Made in Italy doesn’t have to be too expensive,” Nodari said of the opportunities that an in-house production model has afforded the brand. Women’s bags range from $600 to $3,000 and men’s styles are priced between $395 and $2,500.
Unlike many bag brands, Serapian’s designs are not created by the work of a big-name, highly publicized talent. They are sourced from the company’s archives, which are stockpiled with some 6,000 handbag blueprints created by Stefano Serapian.
“Mr. Serapian was a real designer,” Nodari said. “He left us thousands of designs in our archives. We can go on for years using these original designs by the founder, it’s something we can study every season.”
The label’s forthcoming Los Angeles store adds to an existing roster of nine global retail locations in cities including Rome, Hong Kong, Moscow and Seoul.
Together with his U.S. partners, Monica Dastin, Barry Dastin, and American chief executive officer Dana Fried, Arda Serapian is also in the process of staking out New York real estate for the brand’s second U.S. unit. The label says it is most interested in spaces uptown on Madison Avenue, and expects a location to open within the next year to year-and-a-half.
The group hopes to investigate locations in Miami, Chicago and other metropolitan hubs in the future. In the meantime it will be looking to ramp up its U.S. wholesale operations and open a U.S.-specific e-commerce site.
Serapian declined to share sales projections for its U.S. operations at this time, stating that it would like to feel out the market’s needs before quantifying its potential.