Behind Chanel’s effort to build a meticulously crafted retail experience across the globe by way of its own stores is a simultaneous exercise, one that sees the luxury goods titan carefully dictating where its goods are – and are not – sold. Yes, in addition to expanding its network of retail outposts, the company is engaged in an enduring effort to successfully stomp out unauthorized entities from offering up Chanel-branded goods, including authentic Chanel products, under conditions that do not match the ones in which its goods are supposed to be sold.
Case in point: A lawsuit that Chanel waged against Cesar S.p.A., arguing that the owner of Acqua & Sapone, one of Italy’s largest drug store chains, was selling authentic Chanel perfumes outside its authorized selective distribution network and in a manner that undermined the brand’s luxury image. Chanel, which was represented by Italian law firm Trevisan & Cuonzo, claimed that these unauthorized sales violated a prior agreement, damaged the brand’s prestige, and justified legal intervention under EU trademark law despite the goods being genuine.
In response, Cesar S.p.A. argued that Chanel’s trademark rights had been exhausted once the products were lawfully placed on the EU market, meaning Chanel could no longer control their resale. It challenged the validity of Chanel’s selective distribution system, claiming it was applied inconsistently and discriminatorily – pointing to other mass-market retailers like Muller and Esserbella that were allegedly allowed to sell Chanel products. Cesar also denied that the sales environment harmed Chanel’s brand, asserting that its stores met high standards and that any remaining sales were isolated incidents, often conducted only upon customer request.
The case landed before the Court of Milan, which held in its June 2025 order (No. 1919/2025) that Chanel is entitled to block the resale of its genuine perfumes by Cesar S.p.A. and Acqua & Sapone, as the sales occurred outside its authorized network and in mass-market environments – selling items like detergents and pet food – that were incompatible with the brand’s luxury image. The court found that Chanel’s selective distribution system was lawful, and that the unauthorized sales posed a legitimate risk of reputational harm – thereby, justifying an exception to the EU’s trademark exhaustion rule.
Against that background, the court upheld the lower court’s order of a €1,000-per-product penalty and mandated that its ruling be published in Corriere della Sera.
The Cesar S.p.A. case is part of a larger effort by Chanel to carefully dictate the environments in which its products are sold. In another such case, which played out in the United Kingdom, Chanel filed suit against Crepslocker, a London-based resale platform that marketed authentic Chanel products, on the basis that its website, social media ads, and packaging practices failed to reflect Chanel’s standards. In that case, Chanel argued that Crepslocker’s listing of Chanel alongside sportswear labels, its informal packaging, and even its no-return policy did not align with Chanel’s luxury ethos.
While the case settled out of court, the dispute sent a clear message: unauthorized resale, even of legitimate Chanel-branded goods, can prompt legal action if it threatens Chanel’s carefully constructed brand identity.
THE BOTTOM LINE: Part of Chanel’s global legal strategy appears to rest on the principle that product authenticity, alone, is not enough; its products need to be sold on its terms. From New York to Milan, Chanel has spent the last several years, in particular, engaging in litigation that goes beyond simple anti-counterfeiting cases to ones that aim to protect the valuable nature of its brand name and other assets by dictating the conditions in which Chanel-branded products can be sold en masse. At the heart of this strategy lies the idea that a Chanel product is not just an object – it is a curated experience, and one that stands to lose value when divorced from its approved retail environment.
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