Summary
Challenges:
- Evolving EU regulatory compliance requirements
- Maintaining and improving great customer experience
- Advanced customization needs
Goals:
- Build and maintain customer trust
- Future-proof privacy compliance for growth and evolution in business, tech, and regulations
- Deliver ever greater luxury brand customer experience
Results:
- EU data privacy compliance
- Growth in customer trust of the brand
- In-depth analytics data helps optimize ongoing consent strategies
The company
Paul & Shark is a luxury Italian retail brand, founded in 1975. The company’s collections are available worldwide: in 143 countries, 906 cities, and more than 2,000 stores. These include over 150 mono-brand stores located in the most exclusive shopping areas in cities like Milan, London, Hong Kong, and Dubai. Paul & Shark also deliver ecommerce service via their website.
Paul & Shark came on board with Usercentrics in early 2025 to ensure they were meeting the requirements of European Union data privacy regulations.
As a brand built on great customer experience, the Paul & Shark team wanted to demonstrate their respect for customers’ privacy and continue to foster trust in the company.
At the same time, they wanted to obtain high consent rates for business-critical user data and obtain insights to continue to optimize their marketing strategies.
The challenges
We talked to Alessio Di Vietro, Chief Information Officer at Paul & Shark, about why cookie compliance was important to the business, what they were looking for in a consent management solution, and which features were critical for the platform they chose.
Being based in Italy and doing business across Europe, Paul & Shark has to comply with the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). They also need to be on top of requirements for other EU laws governing data privacy and protection, and potentially additional legal guidelines on a country by country basis.
As a luxury brand, customer trust and brand reputation are also imperatives, so avoiding compliance violations and legal penalties is key. However, regulatory requirements are always evolving — along with the business.
The company needed a solution that could reliably be maintained and scale with the company’s growth, without requiring extensive resource allocation.
Paul and Stark also had existing data management systems into which the consent management solution needed to integrate smoothly.
Goals
Privacy compliance for cookie use was the Paul and Stark team’s immediate goal, which has implications across the business. As Di Vietro noted, “It’s essential to our business because it allows us to comply with data privacy regulations, ensuring transparency and user consent. This not only helps us avoid legal sanctions, but also build and maintain the trust of our users, improving their overall experience on our website.”
The Paul & Shark team’s focus, as always, is on their customers and providing the best possible experience. Privacy compliance needed to fit with their ongoing strategies to drive business growth and enhance customer experience.
The company’s customized Usercentrics CMP implementation delivered. As Di Vietro explained, “Transparency in data processing has improved users’ perception of our brand.”
Why Paul & Shark chose Usercentrics
As another European-based company, Usercentrics deeply understands the complexities and challenges of evolving regulation of data privacy and its importance to companies’ operations and customer relations.
The Paul & Shark team appreciated a variety of features that enabled a seamless fit between Usercentrics CMP and the company’s existing operations and branding.
Di Vietro explained, “We chose Usercentrics’ Consent Management Platform because it offers a wide range of customization features, seamless integration with our existing systems, and an intuitive user interface. Additionally, Usercentrics provides us with constant regulatory compliance updates, ensuring that our website remains aligned with ever-changing privacy laws.”.
Results
The Paul & Shark team started their onboarding with Usercentrics in January 2025, completing implementation on one domain within about three weeks. Their implementation encompassed extensive testing and customization of consent options.
De Vietro mentioned that, “Customer Support was responsive and supportive throughout the implementation process.”
We asked about the customizations the team did, and Di Vietro noted, in particular, “Customizing the cookie banner design to align with our branding. Configuring consent categories to ensure that users can accurately choose which types of cookies to accept. And integration with our existing data management systems to simplify the collection and analysis of user preferences.”
Now that the implementation has been up and running for a while, we asked what features or functions the Paul & Shark team has found most valuable. Di Vietro specifically noted several.
“The intuitive interface is easy to use and made for simple setup and management of consent options. The ability to extensively customize the design and consent categories enables us to offer a better user experience. And the analytics tools provide us with in-depth data on user preferences, helping us optimize our consent strategies.”
The team is confident in the added protection for their brand reputation and business operations. As Di Vietro noted, “Complying with regulations helps us avoid fines and other legal penalties, protecting our reputation. And thanks to the customization and intuitive interface, we have seen a significant increase in user consent rates.”
How did we do? A final word from our valued client
Asked how he’d sum up Paul & Shark’s experience coming on board with Usercentrics, he simply noted, “Our experience with Usercentrics has been extremely positive. The platform has enabled us to manage user consent in an efficient and regulatory-compliant manner, while improving user trust and satisfaction.”