Kering’s Brioni and Bottega Veneta. He runs commercial, planning and licensing for the Levi’s brand across stores, e-commerce and wholesale. In an interview with Inside Retail, Flore discussed the key-city blueprint directing the investment, why DTC-first is not a euphemism for abandoning wholesale and what he is actually reading in the early China signals. Inside Retail: You spent more than two decades in the luxury sector before joining Levi’s. What did you expect would be fundamentally different about leading a heritage denim brand, and what surprised you by being remarkably similar?  Gianluca Flore: That’s a great question and one I asked myself when I moved. Thinking about all my experience in the luxury sector, and about where Levi’s was going when I first got in contact with the company – the main statement of becoming a DTC-first company, embarking on a premiumisation journey – I really thought, two years ago (it’s now two years that I’ve been with the company), that it was the perfect moment for me to come in. And that’s exactly what I’ve noticed since I started: everything I learned in my career – being brand-led, being at the service of your customer, having a DTC-first mentality – is what we can implement in this brand. My experience in luxury and the moment the brand is living through were a perfect match.  What is very different and the biggest difference is the elasticity of the brand. Levi’s goes from workwear to the runway. It can cover every portion of the demographic, from a young girl or boy to a more mature man or woman, at every point on the globe. It’s such a strong brand, so you have a very broad audience, much broader than a luxury brand usually has.  On the other hand, what’s very similar is being brand-led: the attention you need to give to your consumer, and all the effort and energy you need to put into the experience you give them. That, I think, is the biggest similarity. What really struck me was that all my experience and the journey the company was embarking on were a perfect match at this moment, and that makes me more and more motivated every day. It’s a perfect marriage.  IR: Looking back on that transition, which disciplines from luxury retail have translated surprisingly well to Levi’s, and where have you had to rethink your approach entirely?  GF: I would say the best approach, once again, is the brand-led vision: making sure that with every decision and every choice you make, you always have the brand and the parameters of the brand front of mind – how you need to show up as a brand, and the perception you’re giving to the consumer. For me, that’s the biggest similarity.  As for where I’ve had to change my approach, I don’t think it’s about changing the approach per se, but broadening it. Once again, it’s linked to the elasticity of the brand: you have many more people to talk with, a broader audience, so you need to adapt, adjust and fine-tune your approach. Not a big shock, not a big revolution, but a fine-tuning.  Whatever the product, the price point can change, but in the end, what wins and what people want is a strong brand animated by very strong product value, giving them an excellent experience. Whatever price you sell at, the value of your consumer’s money doesn’t change. They expect an excellent experience, whatever price they pay for your product; it’s not that because your product costs a little bit less, they want a worse experience.  IR: The retail industry has undergone enormous change over the past decade – you could even say over the past year. What’s one assumption about global retail or consumer behaviour that the industry is still holding on to, but that’s no longer true?  GF: As a brand, we made a statement: we want to be DTC-first. That means we really believe in stores as the powerhouse to control and express the future vision of the brand. In stores, you’re able to better control the assortment, the vision and the way you interact with your consumer. That was true in the past, it’s true today, and I think it will be true in the future: stores are the best place to express the full scale of your brand. What happens inside the stores may change – different technology, different tools. AI will certainly influence the way we interact and the way we educate and train our sales associates. But what I believe, and what the brand believes in choosing to be DTC-first, is that stores are the best place for the fullest expression of your brand. That’s also a big difference between being a wholesale-only brand and a wholesale-plus-retail brand, where you have the opportunity in your own retail environment to express the brand even more strongly.  To your point, whatever happens there is going to evolve, maybe it will also upgrade the way our own people inside the store interact with the consumer. But the retail space itself is going to remain a place where consumers come to discover and interact with the brand in a deeper way. They might already know the brand from e-commerce, from the digital environment, but ultimately, when they come into a store, they want a personal experience. Technology will help us be even more personal and more intentional with the consumer, but the essence of what the store represents will not change. We’ll change the way we interact and the way we do things, and most likely, hopefully, it will get better and better for the consumer, for ourselves and for the people who work in our stores. But the power of the store is going to be there. That’s why we’re going to continue to expand our retail footprint.  IR: Asia delivered Levi’s strongest DTC growth in the most recent quarter. Is that simply a reflection of market momentum, or does DTC actually scale differently in Asia than it does in North America or Europe?  GF: As a brand, we’ve established three things we want to do very well. One, we want to be a DTC-first company and continue to expand our retail network. Two, we want our business not to be focused only on North America, but to expand internationally. And three, we want to become a denim lifestyle brand. With those objectives, North America and Europe are, in a certain way, more mature markets for us. In Asia, we are resetting the brand, exploring and re-energising the way we look at Asia and the way we’re investing in Asia. It’s still a small portion of our business, and we want it to become much bigger. I’ll give you an example: today, the men’s share of the business is much bigger than the women’s in Asia, and what we’re trying to do now is emphasise and accelerate the growth of the women’s business there, and it’s growing even faster than in Europe and the US. We still have a lot of opportunities to open stores in Asia, and to amplify our investment with business partners such as franchisees and sales partners. Those factors, which are part of our strategy, are working at a very good velocity and speed in Asia today, and that’s what’s allowing us to achieve these results. So it’s not necessarily linked only to the macroeconomic environment in Asia. It’s a moment for the brand, in how we are expanding and how we are operating. It’s a very exciting moment for us in Asia. It’s about what we want to achieve there and what Asia will represent in the journey of this brand.   When we make the statement that we want to be a $10 billion company, Asia will need to represent a bigger portion of that. It’s paramount that we are successful in Asia – that we win in Asia. Other brands already have a much bigger penetration in Asia; it represents a much bigger portion of their business. That will need to become true for Levi’s as well.  IR: As you look across the regions, how does Levi’s decide which cities warrant deeper investment?  GF: That’s a big question, because as a brand we are saying we want to expand, we want to grow, and we want to grow fast. So we created a blueprint: our key-city strategy. We identified a number of cities and places in the world where we’re going to amplify and distort our energy and resources. Those are places where you’ll see bigger stores, stronger activations, better assortment and exclusive capsules. That key-city strategy becomes our blueprint for where to invest.  To give you an example of what this means in Asia, there’s a list of cities – not exhaustive, but to mention some of them – Tokyo, Seoul, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Bangkok, Sydney, Mumbai and Delhi. Those are some of the cities where you’re going to see us investing more, better, stronger, with much more impact. We know what we want to invest in – becoming a denim lifestyle brand, becoming stronger in women’s, in tops, in different parts of apparel: not only denim pants, but the full look for a man and a woman. And those key cities are the strategic places where we will invest.  IR: Looking at the financial results, wholesale continues to outperform expectations even as Levi’s accelerates the DTC strategy. How do you see the long-term relationship between wholesale and DTC evolving?  GF: For us, DTC-first doesn’t mean DTC-only. DTC is the channel. DTC-first is the approach – the way we look at the business. Being DTC-first is allowing us to expand our owned-and-operated retail fleet, and it’s allowing us to have a stronger partnership with our wholesale, franchisee and business partners. Owning our retail fleet and having the possibility of testing some of our strategies in our own network allows us to share those results with our business partners and bring them on board – to make them much more comfortable and confident in following what the brand wants to do. Wholesale, franchisees and business partners are an extremely important channel for the sustainable growth of the brand in the future. It’s not either/or – both are extremely important – and what we’re seeing is that this work is making the process even stronger and even faster.  Especially with what’s happening in Asia: with some of our franchisee partners, we can now test strategies in our own network, share those results with them, and they can consequently invest in the way we are already doing. What’s going to change from the past is that we’re going to be much more selective about which partners we want to partner with and invest in. We’re going to rationalise our distribution – we’ve been doing this already, both in our own stores and with partners – and over-invest with the partners who believe in where the brand wants to go, in the vision of the future of the brand. So the two really help each other: owning our own retail network is helping us bring other partners on board in a faster way.  IR: We’ve seen a lot of movement lately: the new appointment of Anita Fung, the pop-up in Shanghai, and Michelle Gass calling out early signs of progress in China. What convinced you that there’s real momentum in the market? Is China actually getting better?  GF: Look, we are a very old brand, more than 170 years old. We’ve been through golden eras and crises, so we know how to navigate every single situation. The brand has been through a lot of different situations. What makes us confident is that the strategies we’ve put in place are working. They’re showing us the first results, and everything is moving in the right direction. We still have a lot that we can learn and fine-tune.  Greater China, in general, is a place where we see a huge opportunity for us. For other brands, Greater China represents a huge portion of the business. For us, it’s still small, but we do see a huge opportunity ahead of us. So we reinvested in and re-energised the leadership team in China. We used to invest, we continue to invest today, and we will invest in the future, because we believe Greater China is an essential market for us to deliver what we want as a brand, and to win as a denim lifestyle brand in that place. We do see signs of improvement in our own business in China – it’s an initial moment for us, but we are re-energising the brand with better assortment, better environments and better marketing activations. We are really resetting the brand in the right way in China, and I think it’s going to pay off in the future. It’s too important for us to be in China. We want to win, we want to be there, and we want to be very strong in China.  And China is evolving more and more, becoming not only a market where people consume the product but one that increasingly influences a lot of other markets around it. It’s the second-biggest consumer economy in the world.  IR: Two quarters from now, what would have to go right in Asia specifically for you to call FY26 the year the region proved the DTC-first model works?  GF: We’re going to be a $10 billion company, and as I mentioned, Asia is still a small portion of that. We strongly believe the ultimate goal is to make Asia a much bigger portion of our business – to see all our strategies, including becoming a denim lifestyle brand, become a reality in this market. As I was mentioning, we have a lot of opportunities to grow women’s, and to become stronger in lifestyle in general and to continue growing exponentially, both in our own network and with our business partners, franchisees and sales partners in the region. That’s our ultimate goal.  IR: Looking ahead, what would success look like for you in Asia Pacific over the next two years?  GF: In the next two to five years, we’re not going to be able to achieve the $10 billion without Asia being an important portion of that. It’s paramount for us to win in this market and to really implement everything we do and be successful with that strategy here. For us, success is delivering strong, profitable, sustainable growth in this market and becoming a really strong denim lifestyle brand in the Asian market. In terms of numbers, it’s for Asia to become a much bigger portion of our business going forward. Further reading: How Anita Fung plans to unlock Levi’s next chapter in China.