Could a Hellenistic poet and philologist crack the challenge of e-commerce for high-end retail brands? Brunello Cucinelli reckons to have the answer

For most of us, putting the COVID years behind us is something we’re consciously or unconsciously keen to do. For upmarket fashion retailer Brunello Cucinelli though, the pandemic might provide some useful learnings to emulate today as it embarks on an innovative approach to AI in retail.

Things come at you in waves, reckons co-CEO Riccardo Stefanelli:

Every six or seven years, something happens worldwide. Let's start from 2001, the Twin Towers, followed in 2008 by the banks' crash. Then 2015, the Greek debt. Then 2020, the pandemic. 2026, Gulf war. There's a pattern there every five, six years....We decided to follow the teachings of Thomas More, ‘God, help me accept what we cannot change. Help me change what we can change. So we are re-tracing the early 2020 path during the pandemic. 

It’s an interesting thesis from a company that has had an interesting relationship with technology. Regular attendees to Salesforce’s Dreamforce gathering may have come across founder Bruno Cucinelli himself in one of his frequent appearances, usually colorful sessions that are hard to forget, in a good way.

Late last year, the retailer pointed out to some of its partner that while they had beautiful physical stores that impressed customers, they needed to take care when it came to e-commerce. While, as noted on diginomica passim, high-end luxury retail has been one of the most laggardly when it comes to digital adoption and as such online sales still make up a small proportion of overall revenues, the damage to a brand that a bid e-comm experience can have is not to be ignored. As Cucinelli recalled it back in December 2025:

They actually agreed they are prepared to improve their online image compared to the physical image of their stores...everybody made a commitment.

The image-building/protecting solution proposed by Brunello Cucinelli came in January this year in the form of its own AI-powered e-commerce website, named after the Hellenistic poet and philologist, Callimachus.

This was developed by the Solomei Ai research center, a collective of mathematicians, engineers, artists, and philosophers founded in 2021 to explore possible creative, scientific and technological applications. The ‘Holy Grail’ is what Cucinelli himself calls 'Human Artificial Intelligence’.  His own philosophy is that he sees AI as “a handmaid of humanity, to collaborate with in harmony, rather than as a mere automation for actions, relations and behaviors”.

Experience

Callimacus starts from the premise that conventional e-commerce websites are becoming less attractive for users in terms of engagement. One of the things it sets out to do is move past the norm of building websites based on static pages, indexes, menus and so on, in favor of something more experiential.

The pitch for Callimachus is that it will shape a customer’s digital journey by analyzing intent, guiding users to discover collections through individually tailored experiences. This is powered by custom AI agents which dynamically generate the user experience based on their assessment of that user intent. In theory, this enables the site to help well-heeled shoppers discover new collections, receive suggestions, and access sources of inspiration, just as  they would in a physical store from trained staff.

This has the potential to revolutionize e-commerce for high-end brands, suggests Stefanelli:

I believe that e-commerce is a great tool for luxury, especially for brand image. Michael Kliger, the CEO of Mytheresa, now LuxExperience, perhaps the very best luxury multi-brand online, he said something very interesting. E-commerce has ceased to be a place of convenience, of good price, becoming a place of service, novelty and experience. I see new interest because it is the most flexible commercial tool that exists.

He adds:

This e-commerce, it's an important resource for our online dialog with customers. We believe new creative digital approaches, well, hopefully a bit unconventional, while they can attract clients' attention, they can encourage them to spend more time on our website discovering collections in an engaging way.

Callimachus has caught the eye of Silicon Valley as well as the retail world, he says:

Many contacted us to pay their congratulations. We enjoy a great relationship with the Silicon Valley people. Someone from the Silicon Valley actually saw in this new e-commerce, a great invention that might indicate a new path in designing and realizing websites in this as well as in other sectors.

He cites comments from Somesh Dash, a partner at venture capital firm IVP, one of the major investors in Anthropic, who said:

This is exactly the innovation needed to renew how websites are designed and function. It is a beautiful idea that could point everyone to new ways of making digital sites and experiences more engaging and therefore, more successful. We like this very much.

It’s early days, of course, but the signs are promising that this new approach will pay off:

Visitors tend to spend over 10 minutes on the website, about double than what was before. They view 20% more products on average, so it's a very significant figure there. And of course, this is a novelty, so it's very appealing. We are present in the U.S., Italy and from 30 April, all over the world. There are two companies that are among the most important worldwide with whom we are discussing possible developments. They have shown a tangible interest. So it is something really serious because it's a new kind of tool.

It all comes back to those regular change cycles in the end:

As it happened in 2020, it is a very special time for mankind. We do not really know where everything is going to, so we have to be hopeful.

My take

With most companies there is a underlying principle, explicit or implicit, that you should steer clear of certain topics in public, sex, politics, and religion being the top three. Dinner party with strangers etiquette as it was once described to me.

Brunello Cucinelli is rather different.

Luca Lisandroni, co-CEO, has no qualms about declaring:

Personally, I feel I have been at war for four years since when Russia started with the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Truth be told, I was really scared, frightened the other night when the [US] President [Donald Trump] said those words [about destroying Iranian civilisation]. I spoke with my wife, and you might even think that something tragic might happen, as was the case for the Hiroshima bombing. So of course, you try not to think about that, but you have a seeping fear.

So we live in two worlds. On the one hand, we have the business, and we focus on that. And on the other hand, we have tension and fear underlying it all. And on top of that, I would say that humanity needs a new world order. And within this world order, it will take efforts to reach this new world order.

With that sort of worldview, it’s only to be expected that some different thinking around e-commerce is going to emerge. This is an interesting experiment to track over the coming months and years. The high-end retail space still has a long way to go in terms of its acceptance of the digital realities,