Dive Brief:

• After somewhat haughtily criticizing the discount-heavy approach of many U.S. department stores, Prada Chief Executive Officer Patrizio Bertelli is wresting control of the brand away from those retailers.

• The Italian design house has been scaling down its wholesale business and opening more of its own stores, for a total of 540 worldwide, after adding 79 just this past year.

• Possibly as a result, last year's wholesale revenue fell 7%, while revenue from Prada stores rose 12% — and total sales rose 9% to $4.9 billion.

Dive Insight:

Prada is running away — fast  — from the strategy of plying customers with discounts to draw them in to buy. This strategy sounds a lot like Apple, also a discount-averse retailer, where the idea is to control its brand by keeping its goods arranged, priced, and sold the way it wants, by its own well-trained staff, in its own environment. Prada can hardly compete on the same field as H&M, where bottom-basement prices are tagged on here-today, gone-tomorrow merchandise. But now CEO Patrizio Bertelli doesn’t even want the likes of Macy’s in charge of selling Prada items. In an environment where it’s all about personalizing communications to the customer, Prada is doing that. After all, nothing speaks louder or more clearly than a happy-to-help salesperson showing a customer a $3,000, papaya-colored Saffiano leather bag.