Luxury products are likely to wither and undergo changes during the course of time. Some products pass the recessionary times better than others. As far as lingerie is concerned, Italians understand the products much better than anybody else. Currently, lingerie is a part of Italian tradition, and is a big business. In ancient times, merchants of Venice traded in silk, and encouraged people engaged in silk cultivation to settle in Italy. Italian silk was so popular in Europe, that Francis I, from France invited the Italian fabric makers to France to establish a silk industry.

 

Lingerie industry in Italy is comprised of thousands of small family type units supplying products to specialty shops. This family based model of capitalism has trouble to cope with the modern world of 'globalization' in which manufacturing processes are shifted to places where wages are much lesser than in Italy. Yet, Italians are famous for their romantic, classic, and sexy lingerie designs with a meticulous attention to quality. The Western Europe market for women's wear is estimated to be $11.27 billion USD. Germany has the largest lingerie market, followed by Italy, France, and Spain. The market value of Italian lingerie industry is worth $3 billion USD. During the past few years, purchase of intimate wears by Italian women rose by 13%, and a similar inclination is expected by industry key players till 2012. This has caused a flurry of mergers and acquisitions in the intimate apparel market.

 

Italian market is extremely sophisticated and the customers are more quality and name conscious. They purchase products that are manufactured with both natural and technical fibres and are also in line with the latest fads. Domestic manufacturers are mainly based in the northern part of Italy, and are manipulated by a handful of large conglomerates. SMEs are either purchased by these bigger companies, or manage to sustain themselves in the market if they manufacture specialty products. E-commerce marketing is very new in lingerie sector in Italy, but 40% of customers have; in a survey expressed their desire to favor this new way of shopping.