[lifestyle ] The Eataly of Fashion and Lifestyle: Green Pea Democratizes Sustainability

[_Happy boy]

 

MILAN — Innovation requires time. Sometimes quite a lot. It actually took 10 years for the Farinettis, the Italian family behind the success of high-end food emporium Eataly, to realize a project that Oscar Farinetti envisioned a decade ago.

“We were strolling around the West Village in New York and my father’s attention was caught by the window of a store where knitwear was presented next to the image of a sheep,” explained Farinetti’s son Francesco. “We realized that that fashion store was doing what we were doing with food at Eataly and he had the idea of bringing the same concept, which is offering something tasty, clean and fair, outside the food industry in the world of things: a sort of Eataly of things.”

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That’s how the idea behind Green Pea was born. Described by Francesco Farinetti, Green Pea president and chef executive officer, as “the world’s first green retail park,” Green Pea combines education, fashion, interior design, beauty, automotive and entertainment into a 161,459-square-foot space entirely dedicated to sustainability.

Opening on Dec. 8, Green Pea, which spans over five floors, is located in Turin in the Lingotto district, where Eataly opened its first location in 2007. Controlled by Farinetti family’s Eatinvest SpA, while another 10 percent is in the hands of the Orecchia family behind Turin’s Vestil fashion store, Green Pea required investments of over 50 million euros. Its state-of-the-art building, an example of the most advanced sustainable architecture, is owned by Eataly Real Estate S.r.l., which also owns the Eataly locations in Milan and in Rome’s Ostiense neighborhood.

“I think that with this project we are inaugurating a new way to do commerce: we brought 100 partners working together under the same roof with one mission, selling sustainable products,” said Farinetti, who expects that about 3 million people will visit Green Pea every year. “We are opening in the middle of a pandemic and, despite the difficulties of the moment, let me say that this is probably the best moment to launch this project. In fact, this pandemic really pushed people to reconsider their relationship with nature and boosted a new desire for a healthier lifestyle.”