How Stone Island rebuilt its website from the ground up

This article on Stone Island is part of our Vogue Business membership package. To enjoy unlimited access to our weekly Technology Edit, which contains Member-only reporting and analysis and our NFT Tracker, sign up for membership here.

Stone Island is reaching a new phase in its revival since Moncler acquired the brand in 2021.

The 42-year-old Italian sportswear brand is bringing its website fully in-house for the first time, having transitioned away from partner Yoox Net-a-Porter, which managed its website and e-commerce sales since 2008. Stone Island will use the same infrastructure and regional warehouse network that Moncler uses, having piggybacked on Moncler’s learnings from undergoing the same process in 2021. This coincides with a new strategy under CEO Robert Triefus, who joined the brand from Gucci in May 2023, and has put in motion directly operated stores and direct-to-consumer sales, and a new WeChat mini-programme in China (integrated and aligned with the new website).

The focus of the new site, which was designed with digital creative agency R/GA and creative director Ibrahem Hasan, is to increase engagement and time spent on the website, in addition to increasing traffic and sales, says Triefus. “This will be the first time that people will be able to come to a digital experience of Stone Island made by Stone Island… We want to feel that our customers are really spending time, in terms of understanding the product and getting a better knowledge about why Stone Island is renowned for material innovation.”

In addition to enhanced product information pages that include on-model photography and 360-degree, on-model videos, the website includes sections that highlight the brand’s materials, product research, community events and archives. An archive gallery, which is a digital version of the brand’s recent Selected Works exhibition that has been displayed in Tokyo, Seoul and Los Angeles, nods to the brand’s collector-friendly reputation, which spans UK football fans, stylish Italian youth and hip-hop stars.

This first step, Triefus says, is focused on optimising the best of the basics as luxury and retail recalibrate in the post-pandemic era, forcing rethinks of the mix between wholesale channels and direct-to-consumer operations, and the roles of stores, websites and other digital channels.

“Today, especially coming out of Covid, experience is as important as product. You have to be able to be successful in doing the basic things very well, and there has been a bit of a level-setting,” Triefus says. In practical terms, this translates for Stone Island into the introduction of omnichannel services (such as in-store pick-ups, returns and exchanges); faster shipping due to warehouses in Europe, the US, Japan and Korea; online-only looks and colourways; and a home base for exclusive drops and collaborations. The website is modularised, and will be changed often to eschew predictability. It is available in 34 countries and nine languages.

“There’s nothing revolutionary in what I just said,” Triefus says, after walking through some of the updates, “but we want to make sure that we’re doing all those things that one should do — not just to be at the leading edge of technology, but more importantly, to be able to offer our customers a truly seamless experience across channels and an experience whereby they feel that they’re being recognised every time they come into contact with us. It’s a standard benchmark of quality service that one expects from the level of a Stone Island or Moncler.”

Taking back control of the customer experience

Moncler and Stone Island join a number of brands who are retaking ownership of their digital experiences — and their customer data — after leaning heavily on wholesale channels and partnership, such as YNAP or Farfetch, to operate e-commerce operations. As early as 2018, Kering — parent company of Balenciaga and Gucci — announced that it would discontinue its partnership with YNAP and take its operations in-house. Farfetch owner Coupang will be discontinuing Farfetch Platform Solutions (FPS), Farfetch’s white-label tech service; Neiman Marcus Group had already cancelled its plans to use FPS.

Meanwhile, brands ranging from Levi’s and Nike to Ralph Lauren are decreasing wholesale retail in favour of their own stores and apps. The reasoning is generally consistent: while DTC can be more expensive, it also enables the brands who can afford it to control the customer experience and build brand loyalty, including having visibility on customer preferences and behaviour.

In the past, the e-commerce strategy was very transactional, Triefus says. Now, Stone Island is following a similar journey taken by Moncler, which also transitioned into an in-house operation from YNAP, to “tell the brand story in its purest form”, Triefus says. The website is designed to be coherent with the recently introduced store concept, designed in partnership with architect Rem Koolhaas, and introduced in Chicago in October 2022.

Stone Island is maintaining wholesale relationships with those including YNAP-owned Mr Porter, Mytheresa, Saks and Holt Renfrew to drive visibility, in addition to 85 owned stores and 13 monobrand wholesale stores. The DTC focus, however, aligns with a wider industry push at a time when brands are keen to own the customer journey and the ensuing data on what they like and how they shop. “When you’re a predominantly wholesale business, you’re not always in control of your own data; you are the guest of a wholesale partner. The journey we are on now is unlocking the possibility to build a database and community that will be loyal,” Triefus says.

More experimental digital innovation can come later, he adds. “What we need to do today is keep our eye on the ball and put the building blocks in place, and as one builds that momentum, you can unlock some of the opportunities that are out there.”

Already, the company is using AI to inform product recommendations and to make customer service more effective and efficient. It’s working on a project that would bring predictive modelling to its supply chain. These are relatively tame compared to the metaverse, gaming and NFT experiments he led as CEO of Gucci Vault and Metaverse Ventures at Gucci, but that reflects a wider industry sentiment that sees many going back to basics. “Having been, in my previous life, charged with the opportunity to drive innovation in the digital space, we certainly pushed the space in a number of ways,” he says, acknowledging that this new mode might seem more tame. “I wouldn’t go back on anything I did — all of it is relevant — but sometimes innovation takes time and takes time to be accepted and understood for it to gain relevance.”

Triefus does see the opportunity to expand on Stone Island’s archival value, hinting at a future that includes resale — a concept he experimented with at Gucci as well. “We have this incredibly vibrant vintage business. It’s just alive, because of this great respect for the history of the house and the different curators and the people who wear it. [Oasis lead singer ] Liam Gallagher has been associated with the brand for decades. That kind of folklore gives the vintage business a great vibrancy.”

For now, he hopes to simply land a great website. “If you were to cover the logo and look at the site, I think you would actually say, ‘That is Stone Island.’ Today, when you're developing a language in the digital space, that is so important because honestly, there are so many vanilla digital experiences today. And if you don’t really mark your territory with your values, you’re not ultimately connecting with the community.”

Sign up to receive the Vogue Business newsletter for the latest luxury news and insights, plus exclusive membership discounts.

Comments, questions or feedback? Email us at feedback@voguebusiness.com.