MILAN — Chiara Ferragni took to her Instagram profile Tuesday to reveal she has taken control of Fenice Srl, the company controlling and operating her eponymous fashion and lifestyle brand. She is now the controlling shareholder with 99 percent of shares.
Ferragni bought the shares in Fenice Srl she did not own already from now-former partners Paolo Barletta and Pasquale Morgese, who owned a 40 percent and 27.5 percent stake in the company, respectively. Ferragni was until now the second-largest shareholder with a 32.5 percent interest through her Sisterhood vehicle.
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The move is one of many that the social media personality and digital entrepreneur has been taking the past bumpy year to safeguard her business amid the so-called “pandoro-gate” snafu stemmed from miscommunication around a charity initiative that has seen her engulfed in crisis since December 2023.
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In addition to Fenice Srl and her namesake brand, Ferragni’s business also includes TBS Crew, the company she founded in 2009 that manages her The Blonde Salad blog and activities.
Last January Milan prosecutors sent Ferragni to trial on fraud charges over the allegedly misleading charity claims.
Captioned “to new starts and to whatever they might be,” Tuesday’s Instagram announcement post included a screen grab from a conversation with an unspecified person texting her “congratulations Chiara! I want to communicate that from this moment on you own 99 percent of the company that owns your brand.”
That screenshot was followed by written remarks by Ferragni.
“Today I want to share something with you: for the first time, I have become the majority shareholder of Chiara Ferragni Brand. It’s not just about shares or percentages: it’s a beginning,” she wrote. “This decision is a concrete step. It’s the choice to take back control of my story: no more delegating, no more pretending everything is fine when it’s not. It’s about embracing the weight and the beauty of leading, deciding, changing. It’s about being free, for the first time, to carry forward my brand and my name,” the post continued.
“I’m not here to tell you a fairytale, fairytales don’t exist. But I know I’m trying to build something new. With effort, clarity, and responsibility. I won’t tell you [this is] a perfect rebirth. I’m not living one myself. I will tell you the truth: made of highs and lows, imperfect, mine. And that’s the only place where I can start again,” Ferragni concluded.
As reported, the peak year for Fenice was 2022 when the company logged revenues of 14.2 million euros, compared with 6.6 million euros in 2021. Net income amounted to 3.4 million euros, compared with 1.9 million euros and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization rose to 5 million euros, or 35 percent on sales, compared with 2.8 million euros in 2021.
In 2023 sales were only partially dented by the crisis, which erupted in December, and amounted to over 11 million euros, while last year, preliminary figures to Nov. 30 were reportedly down to 2 million euros.
Since 2019, Ferragni had been investing in building a lifestyle concept for her brand, expanding its product offer through a number of new licenses.
These include ready-to-wear and accessories with Swinger, whose first collection under the agreement bowed for fall 2021; footwear with Mofra; a children’s line with Monnalisa; innerwear and beachwear with Velmar; jewelry with Morellato; stationery with Pigna, and children’s products, from strollers to furniture and textiles, with Nanan. Her own first makeup line was launched in November 2021, working with Intercos.
In 2021 she inked a license with Safilo for the production and distribution of Chiara Ferragni branded eyewear, introduced in 2022. In the wake of the controversy Safilo ended the licensing agreement in December 2023.