Ferragni, Fabio Maria Damato out of the group: from the great rise to the Balocco case

Fabio Maria Damato, the top manager of Ferragni group, leaves the management of the companies. Fenice and TBS Crew communicate this in a note which says that «starting from 16 June 2024, Fabio Maria Damato will cease from
function as general manager and advisor of both companies for
pursue other professional opportunities. The change is part of a process of corporate renewal.”

The story on Instagram

«In these difficult months I have never responded to provocations or incorrect information circulated about me because as an employee I believed it was not correct to do so given the respect for people, hierarchies and the companies I worked for. But today it is also appropriate to rectify how my exit was an autonomous and voluntary choice, and not, as announced by the company, that the change is part of a process of corporate renewal”, explains Chiara’s former right-hand man on Instagram Ferragni. «Last February, after careful and inevitable reflections, I decided to resign (so no, I wasn’t fired) from the companies with which I shared an incredible professional path, and for which over the years I gave my all in terms of sex of absolute dedication, ideas, heart and head, always honoring the values ​​of honesty and correctness that distinguish us – continues Damato -. To demonstrate this, I accepted the needs of the companies that asked me to stay until June until the end, despite the fact that the communication operations implemented from 17 December 2023 onwards did not see my involvement”.

Damato on the Pandoro case: «The emails weren’t mine»

«I am not allowed at this moment to go into the merits of the Pandoro case but since some emails insistently attributed to me have become public, I must clarify that none of these emails were mine – he further underlines -. However, I remain saddened by how this affair has overshadowed years of hard and honest work done by the companies and people involved. An always uphill job, dotted with many obstacles and just as many successes, which anyone who considers themselves intellectually honest cannot attribute only to chance or luck.”

The centrality of the manager

Before the «Balocco-gate» called into question the adequacy of the managerial structure of a group that had grown at great speed, Damato had progressively assumed a central role in the management system of the Ferragni galaxy.

The powers in the group

He entered the operating companies with leading roles, second only to the delegations of the owner entrepreneur. And his centrality is demonstrated by the powers that until a few days ago he had in the influencer’s safe, the Sisterhood (100% Ferragni) which controls the small empire centered on two companies above all: Fenice and TBS Crew. The first, 32.5% owned, is the licensee of the “Chiara Ferragni” brands and in 2022, the latest financial statement available, it had achieved 15.6 million in revenues with 3.4 million in profit; the second is a “talent agency” that also manages blogs and e-commerce and in 2022 had a turnover of 14.5 million with 5.1 in profit.

Chiara Ferragni’s mother arrives

A clear signal that Chiara Ferragni wanted to make a change in the management of the group was the appointment of her mother, Marina Di Guardo, as de facto general director of the Sisterhood, giving her the same management powers that Damato previously had. It is the (slow) reorganization that comes six months after the Pandori storm. Damato, in addition to Ferragni herself, is under investigation for complicity in aggravated fraud in the investigation into the Balocco Pink Christmas pandoros made in collaboration with the confectionery company.

Who is Damato

The manager has been part of the influencer’s entrepreneurial universe since 2017. Pugliese, from Barletta, studied Business Economics at Bocconi but had already started writing about fashion by following fashion shows. In his Instagram account, sculpted muscles, travel and artistic interests are the main ingredients. He damato – in a Ted Talk right in Barletta – he explained that he had met Ferragni “a few years before, I was a journalist and she was just starting out”. Being a journalist was a job “that frustrated him terribly”, he says, while his colleagues advised him “not to mix with bloggers” like Chiara Ferragni, who are still little considered in the fashion world. Then the intuition to work together: «Together we decided to make noise, we kicked out those who didn’t believe in us». The manager is a figure known to the influencer’s millions of followers because he was also alongside her in the making of the documentary “Chiara Ferragni Unposted”, in which he appears and of which he is one of the executive producers.

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