Wholesale sales for Italian brands increased by 20% in the first five months of 2025, compared to the same period last year, says exclusive data from JOOR, a leading wholesale management ecosystem in the fashion sector. In the meantime, Italian retailers’ purchases of fashion items during this same period saw an 11% increase in gross merchandise value (GMV) over the previous year.
After declining in 2023 and 2024, luxury Italian brands are seeing a positive comeback in 2025. The market will have made great progress this year and conclude 2025 with wholesale sales of Italian goods only 10% lower than their 2022 peak if this growth rate holds true.
The increase in GMV has been driven by a +33% increase in the amount of units sold by Italian brands thus far this year. Meanwhile, the average price point that international retailers buy from Italian brands has dropped by -6%, indicating that purchasers’ selection mix has changed in response to ongoing retail difficulties.
Italian brands are still in high demand worldwide. This year, the top five markets—the US, Germany, France, Italy, and the UK—all resumed their growth. EMEA led the way with a notable +23% growth over the previous year, followed by North America with a +12% gain. In contrast, APAC’s wholesale sales are expected to drop by 13% in 2025. China is the main driver of this pull back, having had a sharp drop of 41% this year, compounding a drop of 35% in 2024.
The largest volume country and a market that is expanding at a rate of +24% over the previous year is Italy, where domestic sales to Italian retailers account for 32% of total sales for Italian brands.
Although so far this year, Italian brands have sold their products to retailers in 122 different countries, the EMEA region still accounts for 75% of total sales, which is a much higher penetration than the EMEA region’s 41% of sales on the JOOR platform overall and a significant increase from the 64% EMEA represented for Italian brands in 2024.
The bulk of wholesale orders conducted by Italian retailers were with US, French, and Italian brands; in 2025, 78% of all purchases came from these three nations. For Italian merchants, the biggest percentage of orders were from Italian brands (39% of total purchases), followed by French products (23% of total).
Compared to huge business department stores, independent retailers account for 87% of GMV, indicating that speciality stores continue to dominate Italy’s retail scene. Throughout the previous five years, this pattern has remained constant.
