case study harvard chiara ferragni

Harvard Business School →
Faculty & Research →
January 2015
HBS Case Collection

The Blonde Salad

Format: Print
| Language: English
| Pages: 25

Publicis Groupe 2021: Changing Nearly Everything

February 2022 (Revised September 2022)

Lilium: Preparing for Takeoff

February 2022 (Revised November 2022)
Publicis Groupe 2021: Changing Nearly Everything By: Rosabeth M. Kanter, Tonia Labruyere, Vincent Dessain and Catarina Martinez
Lilium: Preparing for Takeoff By: Navid Mojir, Vincent Dessain, Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej and Emer Moloney
Nuritas By: Mitchell Weiss, Satish Tadikonda, Vincent Dessain and Emer Moloney

Brought to you by:

The Blonde Salad

By: Anat Keinan, Kristina Maslauskaite, Sandrine Crener, Vincent Dessain

In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best…

Length: 25 page(s)
Publication Date: Jan 9, 2015
Discipline: Marketing
Product #: 515074-PDF-ENG

What's included:

Educator Copy

$4.95 per student

degree granting course

$8.95 per student

non-degree granting course

Get access to this material, plus much more with a free Educator Account:

Access to world-famous HBS cases
Up to 60% off materials for your students
Resources for teaching online
Tips and reviews from other Educators

Already registered? Sign in

Student Registration
Non-Academic Registration
Included Materials

In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni Collection". A year earlier, Ferragni and Pozzoli had already made a decision to transform her blog into an online lifestyle magazine and to build its positioning as a high-end brand. It meant that The Blonde Salad envisaged to only cooperate with a limited number of luxury fashion advertisers, inevitably reducing the blog's revenues. Ferragni and Pozzoli considered changing the revenue-generating model by incorporating an online market place within The Blonde Salad, but which strategy and timeline would she need to achieve her aim? Should Ferragni's shoe line, a separate company with a different ownership structure, be merged with The Blonde Salad or was it desirable to keep the two apart?

Jan 9, 2015

Discipline:

Industries:

Apparel accessories, Apparel industry, Publishing industry

Harvard Business School

515074-PDF-ENG

We use cookies to understand how you use our site and to improve your experience, including personalizing content. Learn More . By continuing to use our site, you accept our use of cookies and revised Privacy Policy .

an image, when javascript is unavailable

By providing your information, you agree to our Terms of Use and our Privacy Policy . We use vendors that may also process your information to help provide our services. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA Enterprise and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

10 Things We Learned About the Business of Blogging From Chiara Ferragni’s Harvard Study

Jasmine garnsworthy.

Share on Facebook
Share to Flipboard
Show more sharing options
Post to Tumblr
Submit to Reddit
Share on LinkedIn
Share on WhatsApp
Print This Page

If anyone’s qualified to be the subject of a Harvard case study on the business of blogging , it’s 27-year-old fashion star Chiara Ferragni . With more than 3 million Instagram followers, fans across the globe, a staff of 14 people, and 2015 revenue projections exceeding $9 million, she’s proof that blogging can truly be a viable, full-time profession.

If you’re one of Ferragni’s Instagram followers, you’ll have noticed #TheBlondeSaladGoesToHarvard popping up in your feed—and yes, it’s what it sounds like: Harvard Business School developed and released a case study on Ferragni and her team.

MORE: 15 Things Every Single Fashion Blogger Has on Her Desk

The study is part of a unique luxury marketing elective course offered to Harvard students—and if you’re at all interested in fashion or business, it’s a must read ( and available to download now for $14 .) In case you don’t have time to read the 16-page study for yourself, keep reading for 10 major takeaways outlined in the paper.

1. The best bloggers all started small and grew organically.

She might be worth millions today, but Ferragni started small, sharing outfit selfies to social media sites like Flickr. She launched her blog in 2009 with her then boyfriend and current business partner Riccardo Pozzoli , without any idea that it could turn into a multi-million dollar business in five short years.

2. The blogger’s cut of a deal can be a relatively small percentage.

Ferragni’s coveted shoe line is a street style hit, but despite commanding creative control over the collection and putting her face to the brand, the blogger’s cut is 10% of revenue from royalties.

In 2013, when relaunching the Chiara Ferragni Collection of shoes, Ferragni and Pozzoli teamed up with an angel investor and sales manager to run the business. Pozzoli said: “In reality, it is a hybrid royalty scheme. We are making all of the decisions regarding the Chiara Ferragni Collection.”

By the end of 2016 the brand is projected to earn €10 million in annual revenue–which makes that 10% sound pretty good.

Harvard Business School's Chiara Ferragni case study

3. If you get big enough, brands will pay you big bucks to attend events.

If you ever needed proof that bloggers are bigger than some celebrities, here it is: In 2014 Ferragni was charging a whopping $30,000 to $50,000 to participate in or host an event, and Bryanboy’s Bryan Grey-Yamboo commands up to $40,000 for the same service.

4. Big bloggers earn money in different ways.

Leandra Medine ‘s blog, Man Repeller, earns most of its money through website advertising and partnerships with brands like Michael Kors and Gucci, as well as by Leandra charging to make appearances at or host events. Bryanboy operates under a similar model, but also earns a large chunk of his income through brand partnerships, like the “BB” bag by Marc Jacobs.

On the other hand, Pink Peonies blogger , Rachel Parcell , brings in most of her income through affiliate links , taking a small cut of every sale made when her readers click and buy a product featured on her website. This model that was estimated to generate about $960,000 for Parcell in 2014.

Ferragni’s main revenue comes through advertisements on the website, brand partnerships, hosting events, and her shoe collection.

5. Instagram is key.

If you thought a blogger’s outfit posts and event pictures on Instagram were sporadic and random, you’re wrong. Pozolli notes that 2013 was a turning point for fashion bloggers , because it’s when Instagram became the most used instrument in the fashion industry almost overnight.

Ferragni found the rise of Instagram to be a good thing, giving brands and individual the means with which to contextualize her 3.3 million follower Instagram audience: “ Kim Kardashian has 20 million followers, Louis Vuitton has three million followers, and their neighbor has 200 followers,” she explained, which basically means it’s not hard to recognize that Chiara is someone that stacks up among Instagam’s biggest players, even if her name isn’t as recognizable as Kim’s or Vuitton’s.

On the other hand, Pozolli saw the Instagram’s rise as a threat to The Blonde Salad ‘s current business model, which led to a brand new digital strategy.

6. There are different strategies for the blog versus social media.

After Instagram became a hit in 2013, Ferragni started separating her website content to her social media posts. While she continued to post daily outfit snaps and activities to Instagram, her team started planning editorial content weeks in advance.

By investing in editorial staff and content for theblondesalad.com , Ferragni’s team is hoping to build a destination that’s recognized as an independent digital magazine separate from it’s founder–giving Ferragni the option to be involved or not be involved down the road.

7. They’re super-selective about brand partnerships.

In 2013, The Blonde Salad poached Alessio Sanzogni from Louis Vuitton to come on board as communication and editorial manager, later promoting him to general manager. Sanzogni’s strategy was to elevate the site’s image by being more selective about the number and quality of paid advertisements they took on. The team made the decision to hold off on all product-related content, and prioritize how a partnership would position The Blonde Salad as a brand over how it would contribute to profit.

“I felt that the quantity of advertisements and product placements on the blog was giving the impression that all content was paid for,” he said.

MORE: 17 Fashion Bloggers Who Also Have Awesome Online Stores

8. The blog audience changes over time.

While The Blonde Salad’s audience started off as teenage girls interested in Ferragni’s cool lifestyle, today she’s gained a lot more cred in the fashion industry and, as a result, her audience has changed greatly. Pozzoli notes that three years ago, website traffic would drop during Fashion Week, because readers were more interested in Ferragni’s lifestyle than fashion at large. Now however, Fashion Week gives The Blonde Salad about a 15% boost in website traffic.

9. There’s just as much travel as you thought–maybe more.

Within a year of launching her blog, Ferragni flew to New York for her first international business trip, and things haven’t slowed down since. She’s a regular at New York, London, Milan, and Paris Fashion Weeks twice each year, and frequently takes trips across the globe to work on various projects and blog content.

10. It’s hard to score partnerships with luxury brands.

From the beginning, Ferragni and Pozzoli have been strategic about picking premium brands to work with–a strategy that only became more discerning as time went on. They turned down high paying gigs with Italian TV and media and kept their eye on the prize–the prize being big luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, YSL, and Gucci. Today, the tactic has certainly paid off with high-end brands paying big money to work with The Blonde Salad.

“In October 2014, I had a meeting with Gucci,” Sanzogni said. The meeting came while The Blonde Salad was running advertisements for a mobile operator: “Gucci said that they would never want to see their contents with those banners on the same page,” he added. Although the campaign was bringing in €30-40,000 per day, they had to ditch the advertisements for the opportunity to lure more premium advertisers.

To purchase the entire case study—and you should, it’s extremely informative— head over to Harvard Business School’s site now .

Most Popular

How Chiara Ferragni's blog became an $8M business

March 23, 2015 / 8:50 AM EDT / CBS News

Just a few years ago Chiara Ferragni was a fashionable Italian law student with a passion for posting photos of her personal style online.

Now, she sits atop two companies worth $8 million. She's been on the covers of magazines all over the world, earned the attention of the Harvard Business School, and just sat front row at two dozen New York Fashion Week shows.

As CBS News' correspondent Michelle Miller reports, Ferragni is not a model, she's not an actress, she's not even a traditional celebrity. But the 27-year-old is a brand, and a lucrative one.

She's the co-founder and editor-in-chief of fashion blog-turned-lifestyle-website, "The Blonde Salad." She founded it in 2009 -- for $10 -- with her then boyfriend and current CEO Riccardo Pozzoli.

"When I started... I was doing it just to share," Ferragni said. "Like, because I love sharing my photos. But that was about it. My intention was to create something that people loved to look at, and they could find inspiration from, and that was it."

The Blonde Salad now has more than 500,000 unique visitors every month and brings in more than $1.5 million in advertising and referred sales.

"My secret has always been to be true to myself," Ferragni said. "I've never tried too hard."

Ferragni and her team of 16 have become so successful, the Harvard Business School has made her the first blogger ever selected for a case study. Professor Anat Keinan and her students have analyzed every aspect of the start-up business.

"She is the most successful fashion blogger," Keinan said. "She was very creative in monetizing her blog and turning it into a real business, a multi-million dollar business. One of the main reasons for her success is this ability to be relatable but also aspirational at the same time."

She is relatable, aspirational, and popular. Today she has 3.4 million followers on Instagram, with posts regularly earning 70,000, 80,000, even 130,000 likes.

"For someone like Chiara to have 3 million-plus Instagram followers is incredible," the editor-in-chief of Yahoo Style, Joe Zee said. "I mean today, your followers is your currency. She was really there at the very beginning, and when you are sort of a trailblazer in a new medium, you really grow your fans fast, quickly, and really with a lot of loyalty."

That number of Instagram followers puts her just below Oprah, but above singer Sam Smith, actress Reese Witherspoon, and tennis star Serena Williams. It also puts her above the international fashion house Calvin Klein, which named her a brand ambassador.

"Besides being such a gorgeous woman, you know, she is also so global. She really communicates the image of the brand so well," Calvin Klein Women's Creative Director Francisco Costa said.

Calvin Klein and other major labels like Chanel, Louis Vuitton, and Steven Madden want to tap her online network of potential customers through collaborations, both paid and unpaid.

Chiara thinks she is transparent in how she operates her business.

"You can totally work with brands. People love seeing that, but you have to build stories. You have to build credibility, and those brands have to really be the perfect fit for yourself," she said.

"What they bring to her is cache, and what she brings to them is that sort of halo of what social media is," Zee said. "At the same time, her personal look and her personal, sort of, persona is very on-brand for them. So it's a win-win for both companies."

The stylish influencer has earned a seat front row at fashion shows in New York, Milan and Paris. Nearly a month-long schedule packed with hair, makeup, costume changes, and runways.

Designers send her clothes and accessories to wear, some on loan and some as gifts. She makes as much as $50,000 for appearances and hosting gigs.

But Chiara makes most of her money with her own line of shoes. The Chiara Ferragni collection brought in nearly $5 million last year alone.

The girl who started blogging about fashion is now creating and inspiring it by gracing the covers of the international magazines she used to read.

"I feel right now we are in the best moment for the fashion industry for what I do," Ferragni said. "Because it's, like, all the rules have changed so much, and so now there are no rules."

Chiara will also receive the "Beauty Icon of the Year" award from Marie Claire in Mexico, City.

She's also hoping to finish her international law degree, but with fashion weeks, shoots, and the launch of her shoe collection in the U.S., she hasn't been able to find the time.

The Business Of The Blonde Salad

In what could be the first case study Harvard Business School has written about a blogger, "The Blonde Salad" looks at the creator of that site, Chiara Ferragni, and her growing fashion footwear empire. How should the two enterprises leverage each other? "Should Ferragni's shoe line, a separate company with a different ownership structure, be merged with The Blonde Salad or was it desirable to keep the two apart?" The case was written by Anat Keinan, Kristina Maslauskaite, Sandrine Crener, and Vincent Dessain.

The Grommet Makes A Mark

Understanding the uk's recession recovery.

Cases are usually about companies or executives, but a new study explores a country: the United Kingdom, and its seemingly strong recovery from the 2008 recession. Readers consider troubling signs that the recovery has not been as broad based as hoped for, and must determine what policymakers could do to put the country on a sustained and balanced growth trajectory. Laura Alfaro and Hilary White wrote the case, "The United Kingdom and the Means to Prosperity."

Working Papers

Competition as strategic interaction.

Abstract— Strategic interaction has been a topic of scholarly inquiry dating back to the 1960s. Drawing on several seminal examples, we explore the nature of the concept, comparing it to other forms of competition in strategy and organizations. Next, we organize and review the findings of three ostensibly separate theoretical perspectives that have arisen from game theory, competitive dynamics, and institutional theory-each with its own assumptions, constructs, methods, and findings-and we identify core insights about how firms compete against one another in established markets. Based on our evaluation, we argue that a promising research opportunity for strategy lies in exploring how firms strategically interact in new markets and which moves are most effective in these contexts.

Entrepreneurial Beacons: The Yale Endowment, Run-ups, and the Growth of Venture Capital

Abstract— This paper investigates the social context of entrepreneurship in organizational sectors. Prior research suggests that firm foundings are driven by collective patterns of activity-that is, by patterns of prior foundings, of support from related markets, and of institutional activism in a given sector. Building on research on social salience and signals, we consider the influence of singular sector-level triggers, which we call entrepreneurial beacons. We argue that the actions or outcomes of salient organizations attract and motivate entrepreneurs, thus increasing the rate of foundings. To test this logic, we examine the impact of the Yale University endowment's investment choices and of venture-capital-backed IPO run-ups on venture-capital foundings between 1984 and 2011. The results pinpoint the aspects of the social environment that most heavily influence entrepreneurial activity and the dynamics of organizational sectors.

How Should We Pay for Health Care?

Abstract— Improving the way we pay for health care must be a central component in health care reform. Payment reform must link provider reimbursement and accountability to improving patient value: better health outcomes delivered at lower cost. Today's deeply flawed reimbursement approaches, however, fail this test. They actively discourage providers from delivering value to their patients. We believe that reimbursement through bundled payments is the only approach that aligns providers, payers, and suppliers in a healthy competition to increase patient value. A bundled payment is a single payment that covers all the procedures, tests, drugs, devices, and services involved in inpatient, outpatient, and rehabilitative care for a patient's medical condition. For chronic conditions and primary care, a bundled payment is a single payment to cover the care for the condition or population segment over a specified time period. The bundled payment should be contingent on achieving good outcomes for the patient, with the provider bearing financial responsibility for poor outcomes, such as avoidable complications.

Download working paper: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Publication%20Files/15-041_1af09bde-47f9-4364-bad6-aaac464be909.pdf

Cases & Course Materials

Harvard Business School Case 715-008

The United Kingdom and the Means to Prosperity

After struggling through the country's longest recession since 2008, the UK was expected to grow faster than any other G7 nation in 2014. Analysts wondered whether the return to growth was because, or in spite of, Prime Minister David Cameron's controversial £113 billion austerity plan introduced in 2010. Despite the positive upturn in the economy, UK policymakers still faced challenges with rapidly rising income inequality, an economy dominated by the financial sector, a possible housing bubble, and an approaching referendum on Scotland's independence. Moreover, many claimed the UK was at risk of secular stagnation, a slowdown in economic growth caused by a structural deficiency in demand. What could the government do to put the country on a sustained and balanced growth trajectory?

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715008-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 514-078

Ghurka was a 38-year-old luxury leather goods brand that specialized in leather and twill luggage, handbags, and accessories. Brightwork Brand Holdings Corp. acquired it as an asset purchase in 2011. Ghurka, under CEO John Reuter, worked to re-launch the brand with a ten-year, three-phase growth plan. The company aimed to be profitable by 2016. Management worked to address challenges surrounding the role of wholesaling, Ghurka's advertising strategy, and leather sourcing issues.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/514078-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 815-070

The Grommet

The Grommet, an online product launch platform, was at the brink of scaling its business. The Grommet's daily launch and sale of innovative consumer products, using personal videos created by product makers, had led to its initial success. In 2014, the company launched The Grommet Wholesale, a similar platform targeting retailers. Was this the best way to capture more of the value the company created for makers?

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/815070-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 715-432

Group Functions at the Maersk Group

In 2014, seven years after he was appointed CEO of the Danish shipping and oil conglomerate A.P. Møller Maersk (the Maersk Group), Nils Andersen was reexamining the size and role of corporate headquarters in the company he had reshaped as a "premium conglomerate." During his tenure, Andersen had divided what had previously been operated as almost a single entity into separate lines of business, each accountable for its own performance and expected to deal at arms-length with its "sister" businesses, while substantially reducing the size and functions of the corporate headquarters. But as the business units (BUs) and corporate headquarters adjusted to their new roles, new issues surfaced.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715432-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 715-019

A Currency We Can Call Our Own: Populism, Banking Crises, and Exchange Rate Crises in Argentina, 1946-2002

The case describes Argentina's struggle to establish a credible monetary system under populist pressures and the recurrent use of exchange rate stabilization plans. It focuses on two episodes where there was "too little money" in the economy: during the hyperinflation episodes during the late 1980s, when money demand collapsed, and the early 2000s, when the supply of money collapsed under a hard currency peg.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715019-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 814-050

GenapSys: Business Models for the Genome

GenapSys, a California-based startup, was soon to release a new DNA sequencer that the company's founder, Hesaam Esfandyarpour, believed was truly revolutionary. The sequencer would be substantially less expensive-potentially costing just a few thousand dollars-and smaller than other sequencers, many of which were large devices costing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars. GenapSys' device, named GENIUS, could also quickly generate large amounts of data, as it was capable of sequencing an entire human genome in less than eight hours. At this price, GenapSys' device would be attractive to customers that had been unable to afford sequencers, such as smaller laboratories or hospitals, and even expand the market to include industries such as agriculture and biofuels. As GenapSys came closer to releasing its product, Esfandyarpour and his Senior Director of Operations and Strategy, Leila Rastegar (HBS '11), sat down to decide which of three business models they would choose to bring this device to market. In the first model, the company would sell sequencers at a higher price to those entities that already purchased sequencers, primarily major research labs and pharmaceutical firms, but position its machine as a faster alternative to existing technologies. In the second model, GenapSys would sell its sequencer at a lower price but charge more for the cartridges necessary to run a sample and earn its primary revenue from these cartridges. The third model would see GenapSys sell its device at or around cost, but use the data customers generated to create a proprietary database of genetic information. Customers could pay to access the database for research, to create genetic tests, or for many other purposes. GenapSys would also build an online store with the genetic tests customers created. Esfandyarpour's and Rastegar's decision would determine GenapSys' customer base and financial position for the coming years and also impact development and capital needs of the firm. Which was the right model to bring the device to market and have a meaningful impact?

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/814050-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 515-074

The Blonde Salad

In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog "The Blonde Salad," had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni Collection." A year earlier, Ferragni, together with her team, had already made a decision to transform her blog into an online lifestyle magazine and to build its positioning as a high-end brand. It meant that "The Blonde Salad" envisaged to only cooperate with a limited number of luxury fashion advertisers, inevitably reducing the blog's revenues. Ferragni considered changing the revenue-generating model by incorporating an online market place within "The Blonde Salad," but which strategy and timeline would she need to achieve her aim? Should Ferragni's shoe line, a separate company with a different ownership structure, be merged with "The Blonde Salad" or was it desirable to keep the two apart?

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/515074-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 715-414

BRAC in 2014

In the early 1970s BRAC was a startup nongovernmental organization (NGO) working in Bangladesh. By 2014, it was the world's largest NGO. It had a strong presence in Bangladesh and had begun to deliver social development programs in nine other countries. Its founder and chairperson, Fazle Hasan Abed, was knighted in 2010 by the British Crown for his service in reducing poverty. The organization took a holistic approach to alleviating poverty, which depended on providing the poor with a portfolio of services including education, agriculture development, healthcare, community empowerment, and microfinance. Around 70% of the funding to deliver BRAC's development programs and services came from its own for-profit social enterprises. The case study allows students to examine the organization's evolution and its business model.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715414-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 515-015

CJ E&M: Creating a K-Culture in the U.S.

Buoyed by the success of K-pop music and K-drama television shows in Asian countries, Chairman Jay Lee, of the South Korean conglomerate CJ Group, believed that the time was ripe for taking Korean cultural content to the West. One initiative, carried out by the Group's Entertainment & Media (E&M) division, was a daylong fan convention called KCON that was held in Irvine, California, in October 2012 and featured various Korean cultural elements, such as music, dance, film, and food. In the spring of 2013, Miky Lee, the Group's Vice Chairman (VC), called a meeting with key executives to review the results of KCON 2012 and make a recommendation to the chairman on whether to hold a similar event in 2013. As part of their deliberations, the executives were expected to consider where a potential 2013 convention should be held, which artists to invite, which target consumers to focus on, how to price tickets, and how to attract more sponsors. With KCON 2012 having lost money, despite a robust turnout, it was far from clear whether to repeat the event and, if so, whether its scale should be expanded beyond 2012's $1.1 million budget. With CJ recently opening a chain of mid-market Korean food restaurants in the Los Angeles area called Bibigo, the meeting would also touch on the restaurant's U.S. growth plans and how they might be connected to KCON. More broadly, the executives had to wrestle with the question of whether Americans would ever really embrace Hallyu, the Korean Wave, beyond one-off success stories like PSY's "Gangnam Style." And even if they believed so, was KCON the right vehicle to make it happen, or was the event just a waste of the company's time and money?

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/515015-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 715-435

Walmart: Segmenting Social Impact

This case provides a sample of Walmart's social engagement activities and asks students to categorize each as philanthropy, corporate social responsibility, or creating shared value.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715435-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 715-024

Bhutan: Governing for Happiness

Unique among the world's countries, the Himalayan Kingdom of Bhutan had abandoned the traditional policy goal of increasing Gross Domestic Product (GDP) in favor of pursuing Gross National Happiness (GNH). Famously, Bhutan ranked highly on lists of the happiest countries in spite of a tumultuous history, low life expectancy, a dismal literacy rate, a small and undiversified economy, and low GDP per capita. Everyone, it seemed, from tourists and Hollywood screenwriters to leading development economists, looked to Bhutan for enlightenment and perspective on crises both personal and global. GNH had become the country's brand and suggested a possible future for capitalism. Was Bhutan on to something? Was there really a tradeoff between growth and happiness, and, if so, was it acceptable? In early 2014, Bhutan's newly minted Prime Minister Tshering Tobgay was faced with these questions as he deliberated on whether to approve a massive new Bhutanese-Indian hydropower collaboration that experts argued would provide energy, foreign exchange, and invaluable jobs, but which also risked undermining the country's brand as well as its happiness.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/715024-PDF-ENG

Harvard Business School Case 714-029

One vote in June, 2012, decided the fate of President Barack Obama's crowning first-term achievement: universal health insurance. Chief Justice John Roberts of the U.S. Supreme Court cast the deciding vote to uphold the keystone of the reform: the mandate to purchase insurance. That mandate had a convoluted history. Though born in a conservative think-tank and originally adopted by Republican leaders as a necessary component of reform, it was rejected by Republicans when taken on board by the president and Democrats. Roberts' decision rested on an interpretation of the mandate as a tax.

Purchase this case: https://cb.hbsp.harvard.edu/cbmp/product/714029-PDF-ENG

24 Jan 2024

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

25 Jan 2022
Research & Ideas

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

25 Feb 2019

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

22 Apr 2024

When Does Impact Investing Make the Biggest Impact?

15 Apr 2024

Struggling With a Big Management Decision? Start by Asking What Really Matters

To revisit this article, visit My Profile, then View saved stories .

Chiara Ferragni: Unposted Is a Millennial Story of Making It

By Steff Yotka

In the pitch black of the Roxy Hotel’s basement movie theater, a single phone lights up. Its screen flashes a series of bright images: Chiara Ferragni outside, inside, and on the hotel’s step-and-repeat in a butter yellow Prada feathered ensemble, crystals punctuating the corners of her eyes like Maddy on Euphoria . We’re sitting in silence watching a new documentary about the blogger, Chiara Ferragni: Unposted , an audience of other influencers, friends, family, and press brought together by Amazon, which will release the film internationally on November 29, following its premiere in August at the Venice Film Festival. The iPhone continues to light up with images of Ferragni, a red-tipped finger flick, flick, flicking at the screen for several more seconds before it goes dark again, not to be woken up until the credits roll and the audience booms with applause.

The next day, that series of images appears on Ferragni’s Instagram with a caption punctuated by the heart-eyes emoji: “Last night was another milestone for me: the documentary about my life @chiaraferragniunposted premiered in New York in an intimate celebration between friends and people I love. I can’t wait for you guys to all watch it from November 29th on @amazonprimevideo.” In the grand scheme of things, you really can’t criticize Ferragni for looking at pictures of herself on her phone during the premiere of her documentary, because she is her business. Her face, her outfits, her thoughts, everything that comprises and represents her sense of self; being the best at being Chiara Ferragni is what she does professionally—and damn, is she good at it.

“I always say I’m a digital entrepreneur,” Ferragni tells me at a press junket the next day, where she is surrounded by a team of managers and assistants I recognize from a scene in the film in which The Blonde Salad Crew—a multi-part company that oversees Ferragni’s fashion collection and editorial site and also represents other influencers—meets in their Milan office. “When we started talking about making the documentary, it was very important to show the business part because I feel most people, even if you follow me 100% every day, don’t really understand what I do. Even in the documentary, you can’t understand 100%, but you can get a better idea of all the different things that my team and I do. It’s not just about taking photos and looking pretty, because if it was like that, everybody could do it, you know? It’s really about working hard, compromises, sacrifices, and having good intuitions, having good instincts. It’s a mix of a lot of things, but it’s not only taking photos.”

Still, her expertise at sharing and being shared is the crux of the film, which has been directed by Elisa Amoruso. Over the course of 85 minutes, we follow the 32-year-old Ferragni to fashion shows, events, and even—in the film’s opening montage—to a Los Angeles piercing salon where she winces as a technician pierces her right nipple. That’s as shocking as the movie gets, much of it instead centering on her childhood, which was captured on VHS by her mother. It’s these family movies that Ferragni credits with helping her find her voice. “The way that I started to tell my own story on social media, it’s very similar to what I used to say on camera to my mom when I was a child. Even when I was younger, I wanted to be in the spotlight—at that time it was my mom’s spotlight. I’ve always wanted that, I’ve always cared for that. The documentary just made me see things in a different perspective.”

It’s been 10 years since Ferragni launched her blog, The Blonde Salad, and the documentary dutifully marks how far she has come since then, using early videos, blog posts, and selfies to illustrate her journey. It proceeds from seeing a young Italian woman dancing on a chair in her modest kitchen, law school books splayed on a small table, to watching her marriage proposal in front of a crowd of thousands of people. According to the documentary, Ferragni’s 2018 Sicilian wedding to Fedez—an Italian pop star, né Federico Leonardo Lucia—was more popular online than the 2018 nuptials of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.

Inside Alex Cooper and Matt Kaplan’s Intimate Beachside Wedding in Riviera Maya

By Alexandra Macon

Trousers for Petites That Don’t Need a Tailor? Inside My Quest to Find the Perfect Pairs

By Talia Abbas

By Leah Faye Cooper

To further illustrate Ferragni’s influence, the documentary contains interviews with Delphine Arnault, Maria Grazia Chiuri, Diane von Furstenberg, Paris Hilton, Jeremy Scott, Silvia Venturini Fendi, Alberta Ferretti, and more fashion-world fixtures. The industry approval, the 17 million Instagram followers, the young men and women that scream and weep in her presence, and the fact that Harvard Business School used her as a social media case study cement Ferragni as one of the internet’s most valuable moguls.

She’s also one of the most clever. At the film’s premiere, Italy’s Consul General to the United States introduced her to the audience, making a pointed connection. “I think that Chiara Ferragni runs deep in the historic Italian tradition of creativity. […] She combines, at the same time, a capacity to be an entrepreneur, an influencer, a producer, a designer. I think these are all features of the Italian Renaissance, to be many things together at the same time,” he said. It’s interesting timing that while certain corners of the world are anguishing over a different Renaissance woman—you know, the one with the three-quarter profile and mind-blowing smirk whose new position in the Louvre has caused a media uproar on par with Brexit and the U.S. impeachment hearings—Ferragni is redefining what it means to be a renaissance woman circa 2019. Ferragni, though, appears to have outsmarted the old masters in the sense that she requires no external inspiration. Being L’insalata bionda is to be both La Gioconda and Leonardo da Vinci, to be both the muse and the maker. (There was a darker time in the past where Ferragni maybe have been in a more traditional muse/maker relationship. The documentary briefly touches on Riccardo Pozzoli, Ferragni’s onetime paramour and business partner, who reportedly tried to sell his shares of their joint company The Blonde Salad Crew in a coup before conceding and selling them to Ferragni, making her the company’s CEO and sole owner.) Indeed, she is so self-sufficient in telling her own story, she says that seeing the documentary was weird. “It was like looking at myself, but looking at it from somebody else’s perspective. That is something that has never happened to me before. It was kind of like a revelation.”

Ferragni poses in front of the Eiffel Tower in Paris

The idea of doing it yourself, making your dreams real, is integral to Ferragni’s success and what she wants to inspire in others. During our whirlwind interview, I asked her why she thinks people like to follow her on social media. “I hope it’s because I’m very honest, very transparent, and I think, hopefully, I can be a good example,” she begins. “Seeing that I succeeded, they can get a source of inspiration or a source of energy that tells them: ‘I should try it as well.’ That’s the most powerful thing.” She pauses. “I’m happy because I’m proud of the person that I am and I’m happy that people can see that and find it inspiring in their own way.”

Towards the end of the film, this level of happiness causes Ferragni to break down into stilted tears. She’s emotional because if she’s this happy now, well, that must mean it will go away soon. The scene abuts another of her and Fedez walking with their son, Leone, in Venice Beach, California, as they discuss taking a sabbatical to briefly settle down. The conversation goes back and forth, unresolved. Still, you get the sense they will #NeverStop, as Ferragni’s old Instagram bio used to read.

“But how long can she do this?” a colleague asked me about Ferragni. Surely there must be an expiration date on selling oneself? Maybe not. This spring, Ferragni will appear on Amazon’s new fashion competition series, Making the Cut , as a judge alongside Heidi Klum, Naomi Campbell, and Joseph Altuzarra. “I hope to keep doing those sort of projects because they are challenging, and I love to be challenged. I love to do something that I haven’t done before just to prove to myself [that] it’s okay to be scared, I can do it.”

Who knows where Ferragni will go next? As a new mother, she’s experimented with mommy blogging. Maybe, as she ages out of “going out and going to concerts,” she could become an interiors influencer or even turn her love of traveling into a chain of her own hotels. “Now is a time when everybody can have a voice,” Ferragni says. “If you have something to say, you can have an audience that will listen to you. Some people are more about politics, some people are more about fashion, some people are more about being a mom—whatever you want. Whatever you’re interested in, you can find a community that shares your same interest.”

Vogue Runway

By signing up you agree to our User Agreement (including the class action waiver and arbitration provisions ), our Privacy Policy & Cookie Statement and to receive marketing and account-related emails from Vogue. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Reinventing Fashion Retailing pp 91–116 Cite as

Becoming a Fashion Blogger Entrepreneur: The Case of Chiara Ferragni

Eirini Bazaki 5 &
Elena Cedrola 6
First Online: 01 January 2023

1211 Accesses

2 Citations

3 Altmetric

Part of the book series: Palgrave Studies in Practice: Global Fashion Brand Management ((PSP:GFBM))

The increasing presence of social media and digital technology in consumers’ lives has changed the way fashion brands work and communicate with their customers. In a consumer-driven market, a new genre of marketing has been created, where influencers and fashion bloggers act as mediators in the relationship between the customer and the brand. Bloggers gain more power as intermediaries than fashion brands have directly to influence consumers. Therefore, fashion companies seek to collaborate with bloggers to co-create and promote their products and set trends for the future. From a fashion consumer’s perspective, blogging is increasingly seen as an opportunity to join the fashion industry and build a personal brand. This chapter focuses on Chiara Ferragni, a successful fashion blogger and entrepreneur who started her career as a fashion amateur and is now a fashion empress. Indeed, 13 years since it was launched, Ferragni’s blog has more than 27,2 million followers today through Instagram and has evolved into a successful lifestyle magazine. The brand Chiara Ferragni, which launched in 2013 as a fashion shoe brand, has now successfully extended to several other product categories including clothes, accessories and jewellery, leading a new fast-growing sector of fashion blogger entrepreneur brands. This chapter explores how Ferragni was able to disrupt the traditional model of the fashion industry and become an integral part of it. The chapter examines the essential skills, strategies and capital that enabled Ferragni to transform from a fashion amateur to a fashion icon and a successful fashion entrepreneur.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution .

Buying options

Available as PDF
Read on any device
Instant download
Own it forever
Available as EPUB and PDF
Durable hardcover edition
Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Abel, K. (2017). Inside Chiara Ferragni’s plan for global domination. Yahoo!life. https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/inside-chiara-ferragni-plan-global-185305631.html

Arnould, E. J., & Price, L. L. (2003). Authenticating acts and authoritative performances: Questing for self and community. In S. Ratneshwar, D. G. Mick & C. Huffman (Eds.), The why of consumption: Contemporary perspectives on consumer motives, goals and desires (pp. 140–163). Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/The-Why-of-Consumption-Contemporary-Perspectives-on-Consumer-Motives-Goals/Huffman-Mick-Ratneshwar/p/book/9780415316170

Audrezet, A., de Kerviler, G., & Guidry Moulard, J. (2020). Authenticity under threat: When social media influencers need to go beyond self-presentation. Journal of Business Research, 117 , 557–569. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2018.07.008

Bayley, S. (1991). Taste: The secret meaning of things . Pantheon.

Google Scholar

Belk, R. W. (1988). Possession and the extended self , 15 (September). http://0-web.a.ebscohost.com.serlib0.essex.ac.uk/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=10&sid=deea865c-442c-4044-ae24-d7a4d44c3de7%40sessionmgr4006

Beverland, M. B., & Farrelly, F. J. (2010). The quest for authenticity in consumption: Consumers’ purposive choice of authentic cues to shape experienced outcomes. Journal of Consumer Research, 36 (5), 838–856. https://doi.org/10.1086/615047

Article Google Scholar

Bowen, G., & Bowen, D. (2021). Fashion bloggers: Temperament and characteristics. In W. Ozuem & S. Ranfagni (Eds.), The art of digital marketing for fashion and luxury fashion brands . Palgrave Macmillan. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70324-0_4

Bowen, D. D., & Hisrich, R. D. (1986). The female entrepreneur: A career development perspective. Academy of Management Review, 11 (2), 393–407. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1986.4283366

Brydges, T., & Sjöholm, J. (2019). Becoming a personal style blogger: Changing configurations and spatialities of aesthetic labour in the fashion industry. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 22 (1), 119–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/1367877917752404

Bu, Y., Parkinson, J., & Thaichon, P. (2022). Influencer marketing: Homophily, customer value co-creation behaviour and purchase intention. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2021.102904

Buffolo, M. (2021). È bastato che l’imprenditrice digitale annunciasse che Safilo produrrà la sua prima linea di occhiali per far balzare di quasi il 12% il titolo della società. E non è la prima volta che accade . Agenzia Italia. https://www.agi.it/economia/news/2021-09-14/chiara-ferragni-quanto-vale-impero-13851298/ .

Busenitz, L. W., & Barney, J. B. (1997). Differences between entrepreneurs and managers in large organizations: Biases and heuristics in strategic decision-making. Journal of Business Venturing, 12 (1), 9–30. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0883-9026(96)00003-1

Carerra, M. (2020). Chiara Ferragni on “making the cut”, slowing down and the power of social media. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/chiara-ferragni-making-the-cut-social-media-1203557728/

Chitrakorn, K. (2021). What influencers marketing looks like in the metaverse. VogueBusiness. https://www.voguebusiness.com/technology/what-influencer-marketing-looks-like-in-the-metaverse

Choi, A. (2016). Fashion photography on social media: Insights from Hong Kong fashion image producers. International Journal of Management and Applied Research, 3 (4), 130–144. https://doi.org/10.18646/2056.34.16-011

Choi, A. (2020). Social comparison in fashion blogging: “Creative self” as the new genre in fashion communication. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 24 (4), 651–665. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-07-2019-0140

Cochran, L. (2016). Chiara Ferragni-how a “crazy blogger” turned her life into a shop window. The Guardian . https://www.theguardian.com/fashion/2016/nov/29/chiara-farragni-blogger-the-blonde-salad-socia-media-styleposts-multi-million-pound-business

Cuomo, M. T., et al. (2017). Enablers for end-user entrepreneurship: An investigation on Italian food bloggers. Psychology and Marketing, 34 (12), 1109–1118. https://doi.org/10.1002/mar.21051

D’Ascenzo, M. (2021). Tod’s, Chiara Ferragni entra nel cda e il titolo vola in Borsa . Finanza. https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/tod-s-chiara-ferragni-entra-consiglio-amministrazione-ADgnfVWB

DeCarlo, J. F., & Lyons, P. R. (1979). A comparison of selected personal characteristics of minority and nonminority female entrepreneurs. Proceedings of 39th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management , pp. 369–373.

Delisle, M. P., & Parmentier, M. A. (2016). Navigating person-branding in the fashion blogosphere. Journal of Global Fashion Marketing, 7 (3), 211–224. https://doi.org/10.1080/20932685.2016.1167619

Diderich, J. (2019). Chiara Ferragni to join experts on LVMH prize panel. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/chiara-ferragni-to-join-experts-on-lvmh-prize-panel-1202988177/

Duffy, B. E. (2013). Manufacturing authenticity: The rhetoric of “real” in women’s magazines. Communication Review, 16 (3), 132–154. https://doi.org/10.1080/10714421.2013.807110

Esteban-Santos, L., García Medina, I., Carey, L., & Bellido-Pérez, E. (2018). Fashion bloggers: Communication tools for the fashion industry. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 22 (3), 420–437. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-10-2017-0101

Findlay, R. (2015). The short, passionate, and close-knit history of personal style blogs. Fashion Theory, 19 (2), 157–178. https://doi.org/10.2752/175174115X14168357992319

Fitzsimmons, J. R., & Douglas, E. J. (2011). Interaction between feasibility and desirability in the formation of entrepreneurial intentions. Journal of Business Venturing, 26 (4), 431–440. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2010.01.001

Forbes. (2020). #846b33a4552c. Retrieved January 15, 2022. https://www.forbes.com/top-influencers/fashion/

Goffman, E. (1951). Symbols of class status. British Journal of Sociology, 2 (4), 294–304. https://doi.org/10.2307/588083

Gronow, J. (1997). The sociology of taste . Routledge.

Gürol, Y., & Atsan, N. (2006). Entrepreneurial characteristics amongst university students: Some insights for entrepreneurship education and training in Turkey. Education + Training, 48 (1), 25–38. https://doi.org/10.1108/00400910610645716

Gustafsson, V., & Khan, M. S. (2017). Monetising blogs: Enterprising behaviour, co-creation of opportunities and social media entrepreneurship. Journal of Business Venturing Insights, 7 (January), 26–31. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvi.2017.01.002

Hollebeek, L. D. (2013). The customer engagement/value interface: An exploratory investigation. Australasian Marketing Journal, 21 (1), 17–24. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ausmj.2012.08.006

Hsieh, L., Child, J., Narooz, R., Elbanna, S., Karmowska, J., Marinova, S., Puthusserry, P., Tsai, T., & Zhang, Y. (2019). A multidimensional perspective of SME internationalization speed: The influence of entrepreneurial characteristics. International Business Review, 28 (2), 268–283. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ibusrev.2018.09.004

Ibidunni , A. S., Mozie, D., & Ayeni, A. W. A. A. (2020). Entrepreneurial characteristics amongst university students: Insights for understanding entrepreneurial intentions amongst youths in a developing economy. Education + Training, 63 (1), 71–84. https://doi.org/10.1108/ET-09-2019-0204

Keinan, A., Maslauskaite, K., Crener, S., & Dessain, V. (2015). The blonde salad (pp. 1–25). Harvard Business School.

Kim, H. S., & Hong, H. (2011). Fashion leadership and hedonic shopping motivations of female consumers. Clothing and Textiles Research Journal, 29 (4), 314–330. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887302X11422819

Klass, M. (2014, September 30). How fashion blogger makes millions . Cable News Network. https://edition.cnn.com/videos/international/2014/09/30/spc-fashion-season-chiara-ferragni-blogger.cnn

Lee, H., & Xu, Y. (2022). Influence of motivational orientations on consumers’ adoption of virtual fitting rooms (VFRs): Moderating effects of fashion leadership and technology visibility. International Journal of Fashion Design, Technology and Education, 15 (1), 1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/17543266.2022.2048423

Mainolfi, G., & Vergura, D. T. (2022). The influence of fashion blogger credibility, engagement and homophily on intentions to buy and e-WOM. Results of a binational study. Journal of Fashion Marketing and Management, 26 (3), 473–494. https://doi.org/10.1108/JFMM-03-2020-0050

Magno, F. (2017). The influence of cultural blogs on their readers’ cultural product choices. International Journal of Information Management, 37 (3), 142–149. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijinfomgt.2017.01.007

Marwick, A. E. (2013). Status update: Celebrity, publicity, and branding in the social media age . Yale University Press. http://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt5vkzxr

Mathwick, C., Wiertz, C., & de Ruyter, K. (2007). Social capital production in a P3 community. Journal of Consumer Research, 34 (April), 833–849.

McCracken, G. (1989). Who is the celebrity endorser? Cultural foundations of the endorsement process. Journal of Consumer Research, 16 (3), 310. https://doi.org/10.1086/209217

McQuarrie, E. F., Miller, J., & Phillips, B. J. (2013). The megaphone effect: Taste and audience in fashion blogging. Journal of Consumer Research, 40 (1), 136–158. https://doi.org/10.1086/669042

Miller, M. (2015, March 23). How Chiara Ferragni’s blog became an $8 million business [Video]. CBS. New South. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jqebhlBHa18 .

Mitchell, R. K., Busenitz, L. W., Lant, T., McDougall, P. P., Morse, E. A., & Smith, J. B. (2002). Toward a theory of entrepreneurial cognition: Rethinking the people side of entrepreneurship research. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 27 (2), 93–104. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-8520.00001

O’Connor, C. (2017). Forbes Top influencers: Instagram “it” girl Chiara Ferragni on building A fashion empire. Forbes , 2017–2019. https://www.forbes.com/sites/clareoconnor/2017/09/26/forbes-top-influencers-instagram-it-girl-chiara-ferragni-on-building-a-fashion-empire/#7a637ddd3001

Parmentier, M.-A., & Fischer, E. (2012). How athletes build their brands. International Journal of Sport Management and Marketing, 11 , 106–124.

Parmentier, M.-A., Fischer, E., & Reuber, A. R. (2013). Positioning person brands in established organizational fields. Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, 41 (3), 373–387. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11747-012-0309-2

Pedroni, M. (2015). ‘Stumbling on the heels of my blog’: Career, forms of capital, and strategies in the (sub) field of fashion blogging. Fashion Theory, 19 (2), 179–199. https://doi.org/10.2752/175174115X14168357992355

Sadler, P. (2003). Leadership (2nd ed.). Kogan Page.

Saliban, S. (2019). Details on Chiara Ferragni’s docufilm revealed. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/chiara-ferragni-docufilm-1202942974/

Sanderson, R. (2019). Chiara Ferragni—The Italian influencer who built a global brand. Financial Times , pp. 1–13. https://www.ft.com/content/9adce87c-2879-11e9-a5ab-ff8ef2b976c7

Savignac, B.-M., Parmentier, M.-A., & Marcoux, J.-S. (2012). Consumer-bloggers mobilized in marketing campaigns: A study of opinion leaders’ authenticity management in a streetwear community. Consumer Research, 40 , 81–84. http://www.acrwebsite.org/volumes/1011939/volumes/v40/NA-40

Schau, H. J., & Gilly, M. C. (2003). We are what we post? Self-presentation in personal web space. Journal of Consumer Research, 30 (3), 385–404. https://doi.org/10.1086/378616

Schwartz, E. B. (1976, Winter). Entrepreneurship: A new female frontier. Journal of Contemporary Business , 47–76.

Shah, S. K., & Tripsas, M. (2007). The accidental entrepreneur: The emergent and collective process of user entrepreneurship. Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, 1 (1–2), 123–140. https://doi.org/10.1002/sej.15

Shen, Z. (2021). A persuasive eWOM model for increasing consumer engagement on social media: Evidence from Irish fashion micro-influencers. Journal of Research in Interactive Marketing, 15 (2), 181–199. https://doi.org/10.1108/JRIM-10-2019-0161

Shifman, L. (2018). Testimonial rallies and the construction of memetic authenticity. European Journal of Communication, 33 (2), 172–184. https://doi.org/10.1177/0267323118760320

Shoenberger, H., & Kim, E. (2022). Explaining purchase intent via expressed reasons to follow an influencer, perceived homophily, and perceived authenticity. International Journal of Advertising, 41 (1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2022.2075636

Sokolova, K., & Kefi, H. (2020). Instagram and YouTube bloggers promote it, why should I buy? How credibility and parasocial interaction influence purchase intentions. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 53 , 101742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jretconser.2019.01.011

Strugatz, R. (2014). The blonde salad’s Chiara Ferragni talks fifth anniversary and footwear launch. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/media/the-blonde-salads-chiara-ferragni-talks-fifth-anniversary-and-footwear-launch-7888047/

Strugatz, R. (2015). The blonde salad at Harvard. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/media/the-blonde-salad-at-harvard-8172610/

Tietjen, A., & Collins, A. (2018). Digital download: Chiara Ferragni’s wedding outperforms ad campaigns. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/retail/chiara-ferragni-influencer-wedding-outperforms-ad-campaigns-1202784661/

Tod’s Spa. (2021). Annual report . https://www.todsgroup.com/en/investor-relations/financial-documents

Tura, A. (2020). Chiara Ferragni, fedez raise 3.3. Million euros in fight against coronavirus crisis. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/chiara-ferragni-fedez-launch-campaign-to-support-fight-against-coronavirus-crisis-1203534409/

Veale, N. W. (2010). A comparison between collaborative and authoritative leadership styles of special education administrators. Journal of the American Academy of Special Education Professionals , 147–156. https://eric.ed.gov/contentdelivery/servlet/ERICServlet?accno=EJ1137054

Xie, Q., Liu, L., Malik, H., Chupradit, S., & Chupradit, P. W. (2021). The influence of entrepreneurial characteristics on the performance of tourism vlogger entrepreneurs. Frontiers in Psychology, 12 (August), 725545. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.725545

Zargani, L. (2017). Chiara Ferragni takes on president, CEO role in her company. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/business-features/chiara-ferragni-takes-on-president-ceo-role-in-her-company-11075897/

Zargani, L. (2020a). Aeffe shares climb after Chiara Ferragni agreement. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/financial/aeffe-shares-climb-after-chiara-ferragni-agreement-1234664173/

Zargani, L. (2020b). Paris, Milan fashion weeks generated EMV totaling 76.3M euros. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-scoops/paris-milan-fashion-weeks-generated-emv-totaling-76-3m-euros-1234631737/

Zargani, L. (2021). Tod’s group appoints Chiara Ferragni Member of the board. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/human-resources/tods-group-appoints-chiara-ferragni-board-member-1234797394/

Zargani, L. (2022a). Chiara Ferragni on the power of influence and making a difference. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/fashion-news/fashion-features/chiara-ferragni-power-influence-making-difference-1235088604/

Zargani, L. (2022b). Chiara Ferragni eyes selling stake in her company to fuel further growth. Women’s Wear Daily . https://wwd.com/business-news/business-features/chiara-ferragni-eyes-selling-stake-fuel-further-growth-1235045769/

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Winchester School of Art, University of Southampton, Southampton, UK

Eirini Bazaki

University of Macerata, Macerata, Italy

Elena Cedrola

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Eirini Bazaki .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Vanissa Wanick

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Cite this chapter.

Bazaki, E., Cedrola, E. (2023). Becoming a Fashion Blogger Entrepreneur: The Case of Chiara Ferragni. In: Bazaki, E., Wanick, V. (eds) Reinventing Fashion Retailing. Palgrave Studies in Practice: Global Fashion Brand Management . Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11185-3_6

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-11185-3_6

Published : 01 January 2023

Publisher Name : Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-031-11184-6

Online ISBN : 978-3-031-11185-3

eBook Packages : Business and Management Business and Management (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Find a journal
Track your research

United Kingdom

Harvard Recruited This Fashion Blogger

Here’s why harvard added a fashion blogger to its curriculum.

For those who still think blogging can't be a viable career, let it be known the industry has officially gotten the crimson seal of approval. In its new luxury marketing MBA course, Harvard Business School built a curriculum focusing on case studies of major fashion brands, including Stella McCartney, Jimmy Choo, and Milan-based blogger Chiara Ferragni .

This marks the Ivy’s first blogger case study, but WWD reports that Anat Keinan, an associate professor of business administration, knew Ferragni would be the perfect representation of a self-made writer gone global businesswoman. Since creating her blog, The Blonde Salad , in 2009, Ferragni has become a Fashion Week front row regular, a designer of her own shoe line , and a contributor to publications like Grazia and Marie Claire . Not to mention, she's even scoring covers .

So what if the blogger's been marked absent from New York Fashion Week? We're pretty sure leading a Harvard Business School group qualifies as a decent excuse. At the very least, it proves her signature hashtag true: #TheBlondeSaladNeverStops. ( WWD )

How Italy turned on influencers in the wake of a charity Christmas cake scandal

With a fraud investigation into Chiara Ferragni under way, she and fellow social media stars are under sharp scrutiny

C hiara Ferragni amassed a fortune through incessant selfie-taking as part of a marketing strategy that included imparting pearls of wisdom to her millions of online followers on how to be “effortlessly cool”.

But now the influencer – one of Italy’s most powerful – is struggling to maintain her own prestige after a scandal over a Christmas cake triggered a fraud investigation , leaving her empire teetering on the edge in what has become a cautionary tale for other social media stars.

The scandal dates back to late 2022, when Ferragni, 36, joined forces with the Piedmont-based company Balocco to endorse its pandoro Christmas cake. The Ferragni-branded cake was priced at €9 (£7.70), almost triple the standard version.

The company and Ferragni, who on Instagram alone has 29.4 million followers, claimed proceeds raised from the cakes would be donated to a children’s hospital in Turin.

In fact, Balocco had given €50,000 to the hospital prior to the initiative’s launch and made no further donations. Ferragni earned more than €1m from the campaign, according to Italy’s anti-trust authority.

In December, the authority hit Ferragni and the company’s owner, Alessandra Balocco, with fines of €1m and €420,000, respectively, for misleading consumers.

In a near-tearful video, Ferragni apologised to her followers for what she called “a communication error”, saying she would donate €1m to the hospital.

But her troubles didn’t stop there. After weeks of debate in Italy over the power of influencers and the money made out of products they promote, especially when presented as a charitable initiative, prosecutors in Milan said this week that they were investigating Ferragni and Balocco for aggravated fraud.

Ferragni has shed 200,000 followers since the scandal emerged, and key clients, including Coca-Cola, have dropped her.

In the wake of the fiasco, Italy’s communications authority on Thursday approved stringent new rules, akin to those applied to all media outlets, to improve transparency in social media posts produced by influencers with more than 1 million followers. Advertising must be more explicitly labelled to make it recognisable to the reader, or else influencers risk fines of up to €600,000.

The crackdown echoes recent events in France, where a law regulating paid-for content was introduced last year .

Giacomo Lasorella, Agcom’s president, said the rules would eventually be extended to smaller fry influencers. “We’re moving within a European framework … the digital world runs like a hare and the rules follow it,” he told the Guardian. “But this is an important step towards regulating this sector.”

Ferragni said she was feeling “calm” about the fraud investigation as she had “always acted in good faith”. At the same time, she has galvanised a team of top spin doctors to salvage her image.

Some observers have been quick to conclude that the fall from grace will spell the end for Ferragni. Others sympathise, arguing that she and her fellow influencers are given too much of a hard time.

“There is a lot of hatred towards them,” said Gianluca Perrelli, the CEO of Buzzoole, a company specialised in influencer marketing. “For example, if the pandoro initiative had been done by a famous footballer or actor, there would probably have been a different reaction. The individual would have been condemned, but not all footballers or actors.”

after newsletter promotion

Perrelli said it was too early to judge the consequences of the fiasco. “Firstly, we need to see what the outcome of the investigation will be,” he added. “Secondly, we need to see how Ferragni manages the crisis.”

Chiara Ferragni wearing a ‘we should all be feminists’ T-shirt

Born in Cremona, Ferragni told the Financial Times in 2019 that she started out by taking selfies outside fashion shows, dying her hair blond from its reddish-brown because it made her stand out. In 2009, she launched a fashion blog called The Blonde Salad. The blog was so successful that she dropped out of a law degree at Milan’s Bocconi University, instead selling clothing and accessories under her own brand alongside her work as an influencer. She has earned several accolades from Forbes, has a series on Amazon Prime Video and has been studied as a business case by Harvard University. Ferragni’s empire is worth an estimated €40m.

On her website, she says she uses her influence “to make the world a better place”. Some argue that this, to a certain extent, has been true.

“Ferragni has done some very positive things in Italy,” said Michele Costabile, a marketing professor at Luiss University in Rome.

He cites her selfie in front Sandro Botticelli’s Birth of Venus in the Uffizi Galleries . The 2020 stunt, orchestrated by the then Uffizi director, Eike Schmidt, was mocked by Italy’s cultural elite, but after Ferragni shared the photo on Instagram it achieved its goal of inducing thousands of young people to visit the museum.

Ferragni was also tasked by the former prime minister Giuseppe Conte to persuade her young followers to wear face masks and adapt to social distancing rules at the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

“Right now we are at the centre of the storm,” said Costabile. “But I think this crisis will be healthy because it will accelerate regulation and create more trust in the market. Ferragni’s ability to recover will depend on her ability to learn from her mistakes.”

Social media
Digital media

BLONDE SALAD Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Home >> Harvard Case Study Analysis Solutions >> BLONDE SALAD

Blonde Salad Case Study Solution

Introduction

In the year 2009, Chiara Ferragni inspired from other bloggers started her own blog named as Blonde Salad, she wanted to turn her passion into the business and in the small period of time, she earned milestones, in the year 2011, her blog has the 70,000 daily visits.

In the year 2013, Pozzoli and Ferragni hired 28-year-old Alessio Sanzogni as the editorial and communication manager at Blonde Salad, he was hired to strengthen the celebrity’s image and Blonde salad’s image. Sanzogni saw that company needed a real strategic shift to acclimatize the changing environment. He has identified hour issues and Chair has to make the decision how to deal with these four issues.

The first issue was regarding the turning the blog into the fashion magazine, as it was right to expand its brand and revenue streams with this turnaround, she can separate her own brand with the company’s brand identity.(CHIANG, 2011)

The second issue regarding the marketplace of Blonde Salad, she had to determine either to open E-Commerce website or not.

The third issue was regarding the product differentiation, as Sanzogni was launching new products, it would increase the revenue streams for the company and it would also separate the brand identity of CFC with the Chiara’s celebrity.(Farhana, 2014)

The fourth issue was regarding the separation of products with the blog or folded in one company.

Now Chiara with her team has to make the final decision.

No doubt, with turning the blog into the lifestyle magazine, company’s revenue stream would increasein the long run, as in the short-run company would face some challenges such as not achieving the revenue target in the fiscal year 2014. Such challenges occurred because of shift in the target audience, as first company was accepting all offers from different brands to put their product on its blog, now with the new revenue model due to turning the blog into lifestyle magazine, company was only accepting offers from fashion industry as now its target audience changed from young girls to fashion insiders.

In today’s world, Brand management has become an issue for the organizations, as brand management plays an important in the success of any organization, if we talk about Blonde Salad, Chiara’s brand identity could influence the revenues streams of the company, as Blonde Salad was wholly associated with the Chiara’s brand identity, people were following Chiara’s personality, what she was wearing, where she was going.

Yes, thecompanyshould turn the Blonde Salad into the lifestyle magazine as It is the right time to expand its brand into the lifestyle magazine, thecompany has the resources and its team to turn it around. Lifestyle magazine would increase the revenue streams for the company and also target its specific target audience of fashion insiders.

Sanzogni has many criteria regarding turning the Blonde Salad into marketplace. But before this, first, they have to work on Blonde Salad lifestyle magazine. As they are trying to turn the blog into lifestyle magazine, so in my opinion, it is not the right time to turn the Blonde Salad into themarketplace. No doubt the idea is perfect, but implementation also plays an important role in the success of that idea. It is not the right time to implement this idea. First, let the lifestyle magazine grow, then it can turn the magazine into the marketplace. First, they have to look at the customer perception regarding the Blonde Salad lifestyle magazine, when it would create the image in the minds of theconsumer, then they can introduce Blonde Salad marketplace.

Now the question arises, how can Blonde Salad turn the lifestyle magazine in the marketplace , it can promote its E-Commerce website on its magazine and it can develop the long-term relationship with the luxury brands so that it ensures that their products are available on the Blonde Salad E-Commerce website. It can face competitors like Net-a-Porter, it can give tough competition to Blonde Salad. By doing these, thecompany can achieve the Sanzogni’s criteria of providing the product that cannot find anywhere else and other criteria too.

Yeah possibly, some criteria cannot be met such as one of his criteria was that brand should be accessible to everyone, this criterion cannot meet as it would be a luxury brand and they also have to use the premium pricing strategy as per its image in the minds of consumer, so brand may not be accessible to everyone. This criterion can be ignored, as Blonde Salad has the image of theluxury brand so it could not target everyone, it has to identify its target and its needs and act accordingly.

Blond Salad should use warehouse as drop-shipping would create problems for the consumer and company as well, when consumer buys two products from different brands then there would be two different parcels shipped and when company shipped its products then the brand name of Blonde Salad would not be promoted, so company can open its own warehouse and shipped the product by themselves, this would allow company to promote its brand too while the shipping the product in its own shoppers. (Hovelaque, 2006)

Blond salad can use transitional internalization strategy, in which company can offer the core company products in all over the world and also produce new products by looking at the needs and wants of the consumer of that specific country. (Moore, 2003)

The company can also use the licensing strategy in the respective countries, through the licensing strategy, thecompany would license its designs, trademarks and brand names. This would allow the company to use its products in that specific country.

Licensing would reduce the risk of theproduct appearing on the black market as this would create the negative image in the minds of consumers.

The company can do its research regarding the biggest store in that country and it can close the deal with them, as this is a very famous shoe brand, with that deal, both the store and company get the benefits with that.

BLONDE SALAD Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Pestle Analysis

Political factors

From the political factors, we can say that Oceania market is suitable for CFC to expand its business. The table shows that both countries have the stable government, that would be the positive point for the company to expand its operations. As businesses operate on forecasts and future scenarios, theunstable government can affect the forecast the company and increases its external risk.................

This is just a sample partial case solution. Please place the order on the website to order your own originally done case solution

Hire us for Originally Written Case Solution/ Analysis

Like us and get updates:.

Harvard Case Solutions

Search Case Solutions

Accounting Case Solutions
Auditing Case Studies
Business Case Studies
Economics Case Solutions
Finance Case Studies Analysis
Harvard Case Study Analysis Solutions
Human Resource Cases
Ivey Case Solutions
Management Case Studies
Marketing HBS Case Solutions
Operations Management Case Studies
Supply Chain Management Cases
Taxation Case Studies

Contact us:

Check Order Status

How Does it Work?

Why TheCaseSolutions.com?

12 Sustainable Fashion Jobs + How To Get One

The History And Evolution Of The Burberry Logo

2024 Summer Fashion Internships And How To Get One

When Did Fashion Brands Introduce Perfumes? A history timeline

FASHION BUSINESS
The Business of Blogging

Chiara Ferragni At Harvard

We all waited anxiously the time when we would have understood more when Chiara posted the first picture about Harvard. All curious comments until it was confirmed the thesis: The Blonde Salad has been studied as a case study at Harvard Business of School!

The business of Chiara Ferragni derives from her blog but especially from the shoe line that are now sold in the United States and who last year had a revenue of $ 5.1 million.

The traffic on the blog, from where it all started, has instead had a drop for the new editorial setting and due to Instagram, where Chiara has 3.2 million followers!

Instagram is replacing fashion blog? In this other post we have already discussed about it.

This choice, however, is not weighing on their profits!

Next month, in addition to the line of shoes will be for sale also a backpack, a t-shirt, the cover of an iphone and a hat with the iconic wink typical of her shoes!

An excellent business!

What do you think about?

These are the first news of the presence of Chiara at Harvard but if I’ll find out something new I will give you more updates in this Fashion Business section 🙂

See You soon!

Source WWD and Chiara Ferragni Instagram

chiara ferragni
the blonde salad

Fashion Careers

Career Advice from 3 assistants that now have Top Fashion Jobs

Love Chiara!! she really proves that anything is possible http://www.populairelife.co.uk

10 Lessons I Learned Working In The Fashion Industry

The Lifecycle Of Fashion Products

What is Fashion Branding And How To Become A Brand Manager

Who Is A Fashion Buyer And How To Become One

Today's Digital Daily

site categories

Parent item expand the sub menu, the scenario may be different, but prada group continues to grow, inside the wnba draft’s impact on designers, understanding miu miu’s soaring popularity in asia, chiara ferragni returns to harvard.

The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni, along with business partner Riccardo Pozzoli, will do a lecture at Harvard on Thursday on Feb. 9.

Milan Fashion Editor

Share this article on Facebook
Share this article on X
Share this article on Flipboard
Share this article on Pin It
Share this article on Tumblr
Share this article on Reddit
Share this article on LinkedIn
Share this article on WhatsApp
Share this article on Email
Print this article
Share this article on Talk

Two years after her first visit, The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni will be back at Harvard on Feb. 9.

The fashion influencer and entrepreneur, along with her business partner Riccardo Pozzoli, will meet the MBA students of a Luxury Marketing elective course offered by the Harvard Business School.

During their lecture, Ferragni and Pozzoli will explain the evolution of The Blonde Salad from both a financial and an editorial point of view with a focus on fan-based engagement, which was instrumental in developing the company.

Founded in 2009 by the duo as a personal style web site and later transformed into a lifestyle platform, The Blonde Salad, which is controlled by parent company TBS Crew, employees 24 people working in five departments — talent management; special projects; editorial; e-commerce, and production.

Last year, the company introduced an online store, carrying a range of exclusive products conceived by Ferragni in collaboration with 50 international brands, including MSGM, No. 21, Mr. and Mrs. Italy, Philosophy by Lorenzo Serafini and Iro, among others.

Ferragni — who has appeared on the cover of more than 50 international fashion magazines, including the Spanish, Turkish and Mexican editions of Vogue — counts eight million Instragram followers.

TBS Crew also controls the Chiara Ferragni Collection contemporary footwear and accessories line.

In 2016, the accessories brand, which is distributed in about 315 multibrand stores, posted sales of 20 million euros, or $22 million at average exchange. As reported, Andrea Lorini, chief executive officer of Chiara Ferragni Collection, said the company is expected to open a flagship in Milan by the end of the year and 20 doors will open in China within three or four years.

Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke & Laura Linney Talk ‘Wildcat’

Fashion Expand fashion menu

Fashion Trends
Fashion Features
Fashion Scoops
Designer & Luxury
Ready-To-Wear
Accessories

Business Expand business menu

Government & Trade
Mergers & Acquisitions
Marketing & Promotion
Human Resources
Business Features
Real Estate

Beauty Expand beauty menu

Beauty Features

Men's Expand mens menu

Mens Accessories
Mens Clothing Furnishings
Mens Designer Luxury
Mens Lifestyle
Mens Retail Business
Mens Sportswear
Mens Fashion

Runway Expand runway menu

Men’s Fall 2024
Pre-Fall 2024
Spring Ready-to-Wear 2024
Fall Couture 2023
Resort 2024

Denim Expand denim menu

Sustainability expand sustainability menu.

Environment
Social Impact

Home/Design Expand home-design menu

Interior Design
Architecture

WWD Weekend Expand wwd-weekend menu

Events expand events menu, eye expand eye menu.

Celebrity Real Estate

Shop Expand shop menu

More expand more menu.

Fairchild Live
RetailRx Community

Verify it's you

Please log in.

IMAGES

Esclusivo: Chiara Ferragni ad Harvard
Chiara Ferragni At Harvard
Chiara Ferragni’s Harvard Business School Case Study
Chiara Ferragni’s Harvard Business School Case Study
Chiara Ferragni At Harvard
Chiara Ferragni Goes Back to Harvard

COMMENTS

The Blonde Salad
In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni Collection". ... Harvard Business School Case 515-074, January 2015. Educators ...
The Blonde Salad
In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion blog The Blonde Salad, and Riccardo Pozzoli, her co-founder and business partner, had to decide how to best monetize her blog as well as her shoe line called the "Chiara Ferragni Collection". A year earlier, Ferragni and Pozzoli had already made a decision to transform her blog into an online lifestyle ...
Chiara Ferragni's Harvard Business School Case Study
If anyone's qualified to be the subject of a Harvard case study on the business of blogging, it's 27-year-old fashion star Chiara Ferragni. With more than 3 million Instagram followers, fans ...
Harvard
After that, It was our time to go to Harvard for a lecture about our own case study 🙂 If you want to read it, The Blonde Salad case study is now available HERE. Thank you for making this happen guys, It's probably the achievement I'm most proud of (sharing a happiness tear right now) 🙂. HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL, 12th February 2015.
How Chiara Ferragni's blog became an $8M business
Ferragni and her team of 16 have become so successful, the Harvard Business School has made her the first blogger ever selected for a case study. Professor Anat Keinan and her students have ...
First Look: March 3
In what could be the first case study Harvard Business School has written about a blogger, "The Blonde Salad" looks at the creator of that site, Chiara Ferragni, and her growing fashion footwear empire. How should the two enterprises leverage each other? ... In 2014, Chiara Ferragni, a globe-trotting founder of the world's most popular fashion ...
Chiara Ferragni: Unposted Is a Millennial Story of Making It
Chiara Ferragni being filmed for her new documentary ... and the fact that Harvard Business School used her as a social media case study cement Ferragni as one of the internet's most valuable ...
The Blonde Salad How Much Fashion Blogger Makes
How This Big-Name Blogger Makes $8 Million A Year. When it comes to building a career as a fashion blogger, there's no better business role model than Chiara Ferragni. Since launching The Blonde ...
Becoming a Fashion Blogger Entrepreneur: The Case of Chiara Ferragni
Chiara Ferragni according to Forbes, is the #1 fashion influencer in the world (Forbes, 2022), with such a level of influence that Harvard Business School wrote a case study looking into her success in building a personal brand and turning a blog into a profitable business (Keinan et al., 2015).
Chiara Ferragni
Ferragni has been on the Forbes 30 under 30 list twice, the subject of a Harvard Business School study and on 55 magazine covers. She is an alpha example of an influencer - the new term for ...
Chiara Ferragni Blonde Salad Leads Harvard Class
MBA course, Harvard Business School built a curriculum focusing on case studies. of major fashion brands, including Stella McCartney, Jimmy Choo, and Milan-based blogger Chiara Ferragni . This ...
How Italy turned on influencers in the wake of a charity Christmas cake
She has earned several accolades from Forbes, has a series on Amazon Prime Video and has been studied as a business case by Harvard University. Ferragni's empire is worth an estimated €40m.
Chiara Ferragni
In January 2015, her blog and shoe line, Chiara Ferragni Collection, became a case study at Harvard Business School. In March, Ferragni was selected for the cover of the April 2015 Vogue España, becoming the first fashion blogger to appear on any Vogue cover. Chiara appeared on Lucky magazine alongside Nicole Warne and Zanita Whittington.
It Pays To Blog: Harvard Business School's Chiara Ferragni Case Study
This month becoming the subject of a case study which that reveals how much Ferragni earns for hosting events (between $30,000 and $50,000) and projects that by the end of 2015, Ferragni and her team of ten will pull in upwards of $9mil in revenue. The case study is available herefor us mortals for $14 - totally worth it if you can finagle that ...
BLONDE SALAD Harvard Case Solution & Analysis
Blonde Salad Case Study Solution. Introduction. In the year 2009, Chiara Ferragni inspired from other bloggers started her own blog named as Blonde Salad, she wanted to turn her passion into the business and in the small period of time, she earned milestones, in the year 2011, her blog has the 70,000 daily visits.
Instagram Fashion Blogger to Teach at Harvard
February 6, 2017. Chiara Ferragni will give a lecture at Harvard Business School on Feb. 9. (Photo: Getty Images) Chiara Ferragni is one of the most successful fashion bloggers in the industry ...
Chiara Ferragni At Harvard
All curious comments until it was confirmed the thesis: The Blonde Salad has been studied as a case study at Harvard Business of School! The business of Chiara Ferragni derives from her blog but especially from the shoe line that are now sold in the United States and who last year had a revenue of $ 5.1 million.
PDF Self-branding: a cross-cultural perspective The Chiara Ferragni Case
The Chiara Ferragni Case Master's Thesis Copenhagen Business School May 15, 2018 Elisa Borsoi Letizia Zappa Thesis Supervisor Anna Cabak Rédei Department of Management, Society and Communication ... This approach consists in the interrelation of a case study, a theoretical framework, and empirical findings collected from 16 semi-structured ...
Chiara Ferragni Goes Back to Harvard
The Blonde Salad's Chiara Ferragni, along with business partner Riccardo Pozzoli, will do a lecture at Harvard on Feb. 9.
Chiara Ferragni: Is There Anything She Can'T Do?
This business plan has led Harvard University to write a case study on her corporate success with the launch of TBS. Her influence is a trickle-down effect. Her influence is a trickle-down effect.
Becoming a Fashion Blogger Entrepreneur: The Case of Chiara Ferragni
The brand Chiara Ferragni, which launched in 2013 as a fashion shoe brand, has now successfully extended to several other product categories including clothes, accessories and jewellery, leading a ...
Chiara Ferragni
About Chiara Ferragni. The 30-year-old Milan native launched her fashion blog, The Blonde Salad, way back in the pre-Instagram days of 2009. By 2015, such was her success that Harvard Business ...
The Importance Of Being Chiara Ferragni
In only 6 years, her fashion blog became so widely popular that it was used in a Harvard Business School case study looking at digital marketing strategies. Chiara Ferragni's shrewd management of her presence on online social platforms, active interaction with her followers, and perseverance, turned her into a brand builder before anyone had ...

The Blonde Salad

More from the Authors

Publicis Groupe 2021: Changing Nearly Everything

Lilium: Preparing for Takeoff

The Blonde Salad

10 Things We Learned About the Business of Blogging From Chiara Ferragni’s Harvard Study

MORE: 15 Things Every Single Fashion Blogger Has on Her Desk

MORE: 17 Fashion Bloggers Who Also Have Awesome Online Stores

Most Popular

How Chiara Ferragni's blog became an $8M business

More from CBS News

The Business Of The Blonde Salad

The Grommet Makes A Mark

Working Papers

Entrepreneurial Beacons: The Yale Endowment, Run-ups, and the Growth of Venture Capital

How Should We Pay for Health Care?

Cases & Course Materials

The United Kingdom and the Means to Prosperity

The Grommet

Group Functions at the Maersk Group

A Currency We Can Call Our Own: Populism, Banking Crises, and Exchange Rate Crises in Argentina, 1946-2002

GenapSys: Business Models for the Genome

The Blonde Salad

BRAC in 2014

CJ E&M: Creating a K-Culture in the U.S.

Walmart: Segmenting Social Impact

Bhutan: Governing for Happiness

Why Boeing’s Problems with the 737 MAX Began More Than 25 Years Ago

More Proof That Money Can Buy Happiness (or a Life with Less Stress)

How Gender Stereotypes Kill a Woman’s Self-Confidence

When Does Impact Investing Make the Biggest Impact?

Struggling With a Big Management Decision? Start by Asking What Really Matters

Chiara Ferragni: Unposted Is a Millennial Story of Making It

Vogue Runway

Becoming a Fashion Blogger Entrepreneur: The Case of Chiara Ferragni

Buying options

Author information

Corresponding author

Editor information

Rights and permissions

Copyright information

About this chapter

Download citation

Share this chapter

Harvard Recruited This Fashion Blogger

More from Celebs & Influencers

How Italy turned on influencers in the wake of a charity Christmas cake scandal

Most viewed

BLONDE SALAD Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Blonde Salad Case Study Solution

Related Case Solutions & Analyses:

Hire us for Originally Written Case Solution/ Analysis

Search Case Solutions

More From Harvard Case Study Analysis Solutions

Contact us:

Check Order Status

How Does it Work?

Why TheCaseSolutions.com?

12 Sustainable Fashion Jobs + How To Get One

The History And Evolution Of The Burberry Logo

2024 Summer Fashion Internships And How To Get One

When Did Fashion Brands Introduce Perfumes? A history timeline

Chiara Ferragni At Harvard

Career Advice from 3 assistants that now have Top Fashion Jobs

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You May Also Like

10 Lessons I Learned Working In The Fashion Industry

The Lifecycle Of Fashion Products

What is Fashion Branding And How To Become A Brand Manager

Who Is A Fashion Buyer And How To Become One

site categories

Ethan Hawke, Maya Hawke & Laura Linney Talk ‘Wildcat’

Fashion Expand fashion menu

Business Expand business menu

Beauty Expand beauty menu

Men's Expand mens menu

Runway Expand runway menu

Denim Expand denim menu

Home/Design Expand home-design menu

WWD Weekend Expand wwd-weekend menu