Maserati Pushes Bespoke Service in Business Turnaround
Maserati is taking a leaf out of the personalization playbook of luxury brands like Aston Martin, Bentley and Rolls-Royce by ramping up its customer offerings of customization of their performance vehicles.
The Italian automaker sees this as a viable path towards a wider turnaround for the business as it seeks to recover from a difficult year in 2024.
Maserati sold just 11,300 vehicles last year, down from 26,600 in 2023, with an adjusted operating loss of €260 million ($284 million), Reuters reports.
Parent company Stellantis is undergoing a review of its more than a dozen brands. How Maserati is managed globally is on the table for the new CEO, who will replace Carlos Tavares who departed last December, when he or she is named. Maserati is very much a boutique brand having great difficulty competing. It has repeatedly denied speculation about a sale of Maserati. Stellantis’s European-centric board of directors so far seems unwilling to jettison the under-performing business.
The Italian brand now plans to accelerate customization capabilities with its €11 million ($11.87 million) investment in a Officine Fuoriserie Maserati studio at its historic Modena headquarters handling bespoke orders for special body coating and, paint jobs, interior trims and the like.
The head of the Fuoriserie department, Davide Baldini, says the aim is to increase personalized orders to around 20% of total car production, from about 12% last year, with a capacity to produce up to 24 customized cars a day.
Some of the specialized offerings from the new department include a wider range of body colors, brake calipers, wheel rims and interior combinations all under assistance from a personal designer.
Two levels of customization will be offered: the first is a catalogue where two basic collections have been identified, the sports- orientated Fuoriserie Corse and the future-technology focused Fuoriserie Futura; the second is the bespoke world of “tailor-made” where content is specifically created off requests by the customer or as unique one-of-one models.
Maserati says its plans for new model launches is under review after being put on hold last year due to slow sales.
Maserati CEO Santo Ficili, says: “We must reverse the trend that unfortunately is negative. Certainly the intention is this, to return little by little to having a positive result for this wonderful brand within Stellantis.”
Stellantis, searching for a new CEO after the abrupt departure of Carlos Tavares in December, is under pressure to streamline its sprawling portfolio of 14 brands. It has repeatedly denied speculation about a sale of Maserati.
Maserati is facing extreme challenges in the U.S., along with Stellantis’s Alfa-Romeo and Fiat brands. Ficili adds challenges with U.S. tariffs will create an additional challenge. “For us, America is fundamental.”
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