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bry2000

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oh yea I only buy from Italy if I know for sure I'm not going to return, or pretty damn sure...
Or if the retailer provides the return shipping label. I had a surprisingly seamless return to an Italian retailer when they sent me the UPS return label and returns invoice. I got a refund within a few days of returning. They took the cost of the return shipping out of the return proceeds.
 

razl

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LuxGentleman

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Even in winter you can dress with style
view our section dedicated to coats
The best Branden like Baracuta, D'avenza, Belvest and many others
with discounts up to 80% from the full price


SHOP NOW OUR COAT ON LUXGENTLEMAN -->

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sood

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Thank you for your continued support over the past nine and a half years.

We are grateful to all the people who have made MAAS & Stacks a special place. Come the end of November, our retail and e-commerce channels will be closing. It’s been one hell of a decade - made possible by the inspiring brands that we have been fortunate enough to work with, friends and family, our amazing employees, and, most importantly, you.

Thankfully, as with seemingly everything related to retail and mens fashion, this means a sale - the last sale encompassing everything we’ve carried from the staples to the wild and crazy (and everything in between).

Please enjoy this last sale. We’ll be seeing you down the road in some shape or another, hopefully wearing something you thought you missed out on the first time around. Shop early and often, we only plan on closing once.

another one bites the dust :|
 

clee1982

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Aha yea Yoox and the Rake has been reliable but I was think someone just local to Italy multi brand menswear store
 

Zamb

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Hello SF,

We are transitioning into the Fall season, as such we are about to release a large assortment of Coats, jackets, Cardigans, hoodies etc. for the FALL / WINTER season. Along with these come great shirts, pants and accessories

We are making way for new arrivals which will be fully out in a week. we have moved a lot of items to our FINAL SALE at marked many of them up to 60% off. Lots of great items in many sizes are available CLEARANCE WEEK.jpg .
 

alextenglish

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Hi all! I wanted to circle back to address your messages about italist. I understand you've had mixed experiences with our site, and apologize first for any negative or displeasing transactions you've had. We're still new (2015) and always looking to improve. Our driving goal is to make Italy's amazing multi-brand boutique shopping available to the world market online, obviously not to over-complicate or displease shoppers. Without us, many of those (250+) boutiques would never have the same global exposure, never be able to sell outside their immediate area, and COVID has underscored this point.

Short story: I lived in Italy for 1.5 years during business school (2015-2016) and really fell in love with it. The cultural appreciation for style, aesthetics, and design principles is truly intrinsic—and it's obvious when you live there, interact, and talk with people. They're aware of brands and labels, but inspiration and quality are really at the core of their approach. That's why I work for italist now…and while we sell a lot of heavily-branded things, I personally like to highlight (as much as is appropriate given business objectives) lesser-known brands and tell their stories (like: Herno). When I lived there I discovered Buttero and bought a pair of their sneakers. I had bespoke dress shirts made for under $70 each. I shopped at an amazing resale shop in Milan whose owner I am still friends with. (but enough about me!)

I don't want to monopolize the sales alerts thread, so feel free to DM me if you have other questions or concerns and/or we might consider starting an official italist thread…tbd!

I imagine Italist have a lot of charge backs and disputes, though. Their return process is absolutely awful and seems like complete bullshit. I’ve ordered from them twice and never would again because of it. The return costs for a pair of $320 sneakers would have been about $140 and their reasoning for it is stupid. Claiming you need to pay the duties/taxes/fees on returning even though it’s going back to the original vendor and they’ve already charged duties/taxes when you bought the item, plus they overcharge for the actual return shipping but won’t let you choose your own shipping method which would be considerably cheaper.

International returns are becoming increasingly complex, and the sites that make it 'easy' are often exploiting loopholes (like Farfetch sending all returns to the UK) which will soon come to an end as Brexit takes effect. OR, they are massively eating the costs of free returns.

As far as DHL and pricing, using a different carrier to return is not safe for you as the customer (what if your return gets lost in the maze?) and difficult to guarantee the timing, and hence difficult for the boutiques to accept a big delay in returns. The price for DHL express shipping through our agreement is way lower than what a customer would have to pay retail (using a reliable courier), and we've worked over time to get this as low as possible.

In my experience the prices are jacked the hell up

$454

vs

$320 direct from the source. They also offer returns, maybe even for free

That's just one quick example and I don't think it's an unusual one

We're a marketplace and aggregate 250 boutiques' merchandise. Each one sets their pricing (or discount levels) with us. We can't guarantee or control the pricing you find elsewhere. SOTF's shipping is 35 euro, free returns (minus any re-import duties, which we also have to contend with). We offer free express shipping, with non-free returns. You are free as a savvy customer to make your own judgement about what is valuable to you, and where you can find the best deal, and that's the beauty of online commerce.

If I'll be honest, not offering paypal and charging an obscene amount for returns? Is this 2007? It's a competitive market lmao i can literally just go somewhere else

You're quite right—it is a competitive market, and everyone is trying to figure out how best to address these friction points. We've chosen to not accept PayPal or offer free returns, which probably makes us lose some business, but that's a risk-assessment decision that works for us, for now. In the future we may be able to expand/improve both of those aspects.

While I have had some heated exchanges with Italist in the past over what I viewed to be injustices perpetrated against me, I have since adopted a more nuanced view. It is true that packages are subject to duties going both ways and by different countries. Undoubtedly accurate accounting of relevant trade regulations is a headache and it seems apparent that the de facto enforcement of these regulations is arbitrary. And that's all before the equally-arbitrary carrier fees.

I would hope that an established international vendor could accomplish some economies of scale through volume shipping agreements, as well as perhaps invest in the type of infrastructure that would allow for accurate accounting of import fees to which they are subject, thus (presumably) allowing for distribution of savings in a way that makes their service more desirable to the consumer. But this is outside my wheelhouse.

Although, Italist isn't a vendor – they will acknowledge as much themselves. They're essentially an import broker.

I will say that it sucked to pay $70 in return costs, $40 of which was shipping.

We are constantly negotiating with DHL, what we actually have achieved is a full integration with them. One of their agents can (and often has to) prove that for each single package, the item returning to Italy is the exact same item that had been sent out. In this way we avoid return taxes that would be way higher and we charge a flat fee that is what we pay DHL to prepare this documentation.

If the product is wrong or defective returns are on us, of course.

I don't know if any of you guys have ever dealt with shipping TO Italy, but it really is a nightmare. The regular post, you may as well just throw everything into the sea. DHL is, ime, the only semi-reliable shipper, and even then, it has issues. Expensive bottles of brandy are broken, things are 2-3 days late even without the pandemic, etc...

This is not really comparable to any Northern European country. The Scandanavian countries, for example, had excellent infratstructure.

Just FWIW. When I buy anything from Italy, to me, I just toss the idea of a return out the window, tbh. it's the price of getting things at a significant discount. Returns are really just a gigantic hassle

DHL is honestly the most reliable world wide. International returns are becoming increasingly complicated because of increasing regulation and every country (trying to catch up with global e-comm) is attempting to recoup as much money as possible on international transactions.

VAT is now specific country by country in Europe and the United States requires all e-commerce transactions to pay sales taxes, even international websites. Farfetch has declared to the SEC that they will fix it soon and most relevant advisors explain that the same will happen to all international sites selling to the US. In the end, if Farfetch doesn't charge you and then pay some sales tax on your order, you as the end user are actually responsible and theoretically the IRS could come after you over it.

Appreciate you reaching out and interacting with everyone. I understand Italist's position, however, from experience I have often been able to find the partner boutique pretty easily or another boutique selling the item for the same price or better than you have listed. That boutique also almost always has a better return policy or accepts Paypal which takes away the majority of return cost risk. In a way Italist feels like farfetch with the hit or miss pricing except farfetch also has free returns...

It's definitely up to you guys and I wish you the best, but I hope you can understand why it's more attractive for a consumer to purchase from other places. Theres enough competition that as a consumer I can get a similar price or better without any worry of never being able to return something.

The boutiques aren't totally free in defining prices or starting discounts as they are actively monitored by the brands, so certain prices may be here today, gone tomorrow (brands will crack down). And yes you can get a discount as well after a private negotiation when you reach them online. The free return policy for Farfetch will change in January because of Brexit and they will not be able to grant a return free of return taxes via the UK.

You are totally correct to make your own judgements about what works best for you, but we've been in compliance all along with taxes, addressing import duties, etc., all while not completely eating our margin by offering free returns.

Or if the retailer provides the return shipping label. I had a surprisingly seamless return to an Italian retailer when they sent me the UPS return label and returns invoice. I got a refund within a few days of returning. They took the cost of the return shipping out of the return proceeds.

We do offer that as well, it's in your profile on the site, when you decide to return.

OK, I know that was long, my apologies. But thank you for the opportunity to respond!
 

LuxGentleman

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Use coupon code : BELVEST20

Check it now on : Luxgentleman.com

belvest.jpg
 

crazn

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Hi all! I wanted to circle back to address your messages about italist. I understand you've had mixed experiences with our site, and apologize first for any negative or displeasing transactions you've had. We're still new (2015) and always looking to improve. Our driving goal is to make Italy's amazing multi-brand boutique shopping available to the world market online, obviously not to over-complicate or displease shoppers. Without us, many of those (250+) boutiques would never have the same global exposure, never be able to sell outside their immediate area, and COVID has underscored this point.

Short story: I lived in Italy for 1.5 years during business school (2015-2016) and really fell in love with it. The cultural appreciation for style, aesthetics, and design principles is truly intrinsic—and it's obvious when you live there, interact, and talk with people. They're aware of brands and labels, but inspiration and quality are really at the core of their approach. That's why I work for italist now…and while we sell a lot of heavily-branded things, I personally like to highlight (as much as is appropriate given business objectives) lesser-known brands and tell their stories (like: Herno). When I lived there I discovered Buttero and bought a pair of their sneakers. I had bespoke dress shirts made for under $70 each. I shopped at an amazing resale shop in Milan whose owner I am still friends with. (but enough about me!)

I don't want to monopolize the sales alerts thread, so feel free to DM me if you have other questions or concerns and/or we might consider starting an official italist thread…tbd!



International returns are becoming increasingly complex, and the sites that make it 'easy' are often exploiting loopholes (like Farfetch sending all returns to the UK) which will soon come to an end as Brexit takes effect. OR, they are massively eating the costs of free returns.

As far as DHL and pricing, using a different carrier to return is not safe for you as the customer (what if your return gets lost in the maze?) and difficult to guarantee the timing, and hence difficult for the boutiques to accept a big delay in returns. The price for DHL express shipping through our agreement is way lower than what a customer would have to pay retail (using a reliable courier), and we've worked over time to get this as low as possible.



We're a marketplace and aggregate 250 boutiques' merchandise. Each one sets their pricing (or discount levels) with us. We can't guarantee or control the pricing you find elsewhere. SOTF's shipping is 35 euro, free returns (minus any re-import duties, which we also have to contend with). We offer free express shipping, with non-free returns. You are free as a savvy customer to make your own judgement about what is valuable to you, and where you can find the best deal, and that's the beauty of online commerce.



You're quite right—it is a competitive market, and everyone is trying to figure out how best to address these friction points. We've chosen to not accept PayPal or offer free returns, which probably makes us lose some business, but that's a risk-assessment decision that works for us, for now. In the future we may be able to expand/improve both of those aspects.



We are constantly negotiating with DHL, what we actually have achieved is a full integration with them. One of their agents can (and often has to) prove that for each single package, the item returning to Italy is the exact same item that had been sent out. In this way we avoid return taxes that would be way higher and we charge a flat fee that is what we pay DHL to prepare this documentation.

If the product is wrong or defective returns are on us, of course.



DHL is honestly the most reliable world wide. International returns are becoming increasingly complicated because of increasing regulation and every country (trying to catch up with global e-comm) is attempting to recoup as much money as possible on international transactions.

VAT is now specific country by country in Europe and the United States requires all e-commerce transactions to pay sales taxes, even international websites. Farfetch has declared to the SEC that they will fix it soon and most relevant advisors explain that the same will happen to all international sites selling to the US. In the end, if Farfetch doesn't charge you and then pay some sales tax on your order, you as the end user are actually responsible and theoretically the IRS could come after you over it.



The boutiques aren't totally free in defining prices or starting discounts as they are actively monitored by the brands, so certain prices may be here today, gone tomorrow (brands will crack down). And yes you can get a discount as well after a private negotiation when you reach them online. The free return policy for Farfetch will change in January because of Brexit and they will not be able to grant a return free of return taxes via the UK.

You are totally correct to make your own judgements about what works best for you, but we've been in compliance all along with taxes, addressing import duties, etc., all while not completely eating our margin by offering free returns.



We do offer that as well, it's in your profile on the site, when you decide to return.

OK, I know that was long, my apologies. But thank you for the opportunity to respond!
Can I just add that the website and platform is a pain to navigate in addition to all the noise above. Prices being jacked way above acceptable honestly.

You might complain your competitors are using loopholes but the basic user experience fundamentals are kinda lacking for a site that has been around for 5-6 years. There shouldn’t be any more growing pains if you have been around for so long.
 

zippyh

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VAT is now specific country by country in Europe and the United States requires all e-commerce transactions to pay sales taxes, even international websites. Farfetch has declared to the SEC that they will fix it soon and most relevant advisors explain that the same will happen to all international sites selling to the US. In the end, if Farfetch doesn't charge you and then pay some sales tax on your order, you as the end user are actually responsible and theoretically the IRS could come after you over it.

Sales tax in the US is all at the state/county/city level. The IRS doesn't have jack to do with it. A state level tax collector might go after someone, but not the IRS. There is no federal level requirement for international sellers to pay sales tax; each individual state has its own requirement. Shouldn't you know this?
 

thekunk07

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Hi all! I wanted to circle back to address your messages about italist. I understand you've had mixed experiences with our site, and apologize first for any negative or displeasing transactions you've had. We're still new (2015) and always looking to improve. Our driving goal is to make Italy's amazing multi-brand boutique shopping available to the world market online, obviously not to over-complicate or displease shoppers. Without us, many of those (250+) boutiques would never have the same global exposure, never be able to sell outside their immediate area, and COVID has underscored this point.

Short story: I lived in Italy for 1.5 years during business school (2015-2016) and really fell in love with it. The cultural appreciation for style, aesthetics, and design principles is truly intrinsic—and it's obvious when you live there, interact, and talk with people. They're aware of brands and labels, but inspiration and quality are really at the core of their approach. That's why I work for italist now…and while we sell a lot of heavily-branded things, I personally like to highlight (as much as is appropriate given business objectives) lesser-known brands and tell their stories (like: Herno). When I lived there I discovered Buttero and bought a pair of their sneakers. I had bespoke dress shirts made for under $70 each. I shopped at an amazing resale shop in Milan whose owner I am still friends with. (but enough about me!)

I don't want to monopolize the sales alerts thread, so feel free to DM me if you have other questions or concerns and/or we might consider starting an official italist thread…tbd!



International returns are becoming increasingly complex, and the sites that make it 'easy' are often exploiting loopholes (like Farfetch sending all returns to the UK) which will soon come to an end as Brexit takes effect. OR, they are massively eating the costs of free returns.

As far as DHL and pricing, using a different carrier to return is not safe for you as the customer (what if your return gets lost in the maze?) and difficult to guarantee the timing, and hence difficult for the boutiques to accept a big delay in returns. The price for DHL express shipping through our agreement is way lower than what a customer would have to pay retail (using a reliable courier), and we've worked over time to get this as low as possible.



We're a marketplace and aggregate 250 boutiques' merchandise. Each one sets their pricing (or discount levels) with us. We can't guarantee or control the pricing you find elsewhere. SOTF's shipping is 35 euro, free returns (minus any re-import duties, which we also have to contend with). We offer free express shipping, with non-free returns. You are free as a savvy customer to make your own judgement about what is valuable to you, and where you can find the best deal, and that's the beauty of online commerce.



You're quite right—it is a competitive market, and everyone is trying to figure out how best to address these friction points. We've chosen to not accept PayPal or offer free returns, which probably makes us lose some business, but that's a risk-assessment decision that works for us, for now. In the future we may be able to expand/improve both of those aspects.



We are constantly negotiating with DHL, what we actually have achieved is a full integration with them. One of their agents can (and often has to) prove that for each single package, the item returning to Italy is the exact same item that had been sent out. In this way we avoid return taxes that would be way higher and we charge a flat fee that is what we pay DHL to prepare this documentation.

If the product is wrong or defective returns are on us, of course.



DHL is honestly the most reliable world wide. International returns are becoming increasingly complicated because of increasing regulation and every country (trying to catch up with global e-comm) is attempting to recoup as much money as possible on international transactions.

VAT is now specific country by country in Europe and the United States requires all e-commerce transactions to pay sales taxes, even international websites. Farfetch has declared to the SEC that they will fix it soon and most relevant advisors explain that the same will happen to all international sites selling to the US. In the end, if Farfetch doesn't charge you and then pay some sales tax on your order, you as the end user are actually responsible and theoretically the IRS could come after you over it.



The boutiques aren't totally free in defining prices or starting discounts as they are actively monitored by the brands, so certain prices may be here today, gone tomorrow (brands will crack down). And yes you can get a discount as well after a private negotiation when you reach them online. The free return policy for Farfetch will change in January because of Brexit and they will not be able to grant a return free of return taxes via the UK.

You are totally correct to make your own judgements about what works best for you, but we've been in compliance all along with taxes, addressing import duties, etc., all while not completely eating our margin by offering free returns.



We do offer that as well, it's in your profile on the site, when you decide to return.

OK, I know that was long, my apologies. But thank you for the opportunity to respond!
now just add adult male sizes to your inventory. i wear a us 46 jacket and 33 pants and have never been able to purchase anything from you. i wish stores realized it isn't size 38 waifs spending 4k on rick owens
 

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