In June of 2019, Apple announced that chief design officer Jony Ive would be departing the company to form his own independent design firm called LoveFrom. Since then, details about Ive and LoveFrom have been sparse, aside from a multi-year Airbnb partnership announced last year.
Today, however, Ferrari and Exor (the holding company that controls Ferrari) have announced a multi-year partnership with LoveFrom to “explore projects in the luxury business.”
As first reported by Bloomberg, Ferrari made the announcement in a statement today:
Other details about the extent of the partnership are unclear. The statement simply confirms that Ferrari is teaming up with the design company led by Ive and Marc Newsom.
“The first expression of this new partnership will bring together Ferrari’s legendary performance and excellence with LoveFrom’s unrivaled experience and creativity that has defined extraordinary world changing products,” the statement said.
Under the leadership of Exor’s John Elkann, Italy’s billionaire Agnelli family investment firm has been diversifying its investments in recent years beyond the car industry. Exor also controls Juventus Football Club SpA and reinsurance business PartnerRe, as well as a stake in Stellantis NV, formed by the merger of Fiat Chrysler with PSA Group.
Interestingly, a report in June claimed that “at least four” Apple design members have also departed Apple to join Ive at his new design company. Those four employees include Wan Is, Chris Wilson, Patch Kessler, and Jeff Tiller, who all previously worked in Ive’s design group at Apple. The current Apple Industrial Design Group is spearheaded by Evans Hankey and Alan Dye.
When Ive’s departure from Apple was announced in 2019, it was said that Apple would be a client of LoveFrom. We have not learned more about the extent of that relationship, though. Instead, all we have are the two partnerships with Airbnb and Ferrari.
