Celebrity-favored lingerie brand La Perla is known for scandalous silhouettes, but the real scandal might be that the company is reportedly not paying its employees, according to an email obtained by the New York Post.
Peter Shaefer, director of the Italian-based lingerie company, penned an email to employees this week explaining that the company did not have the financial means to properly fund workers’ salaries.
“We had assumed based on assurances that the funding would be available latest yesterday,” the email read. “Unfortunately this did not happen.”
Other reports from August claim that the company also has not been consistently paying its employees in Italy, prompting lawsuits by several vendors.
The situation with La Perla’s 230 Italian employees grew so dire that the company was ordered by a legal counsel to come up with a business plan to show how they planned to pay out employees by October, as well as backtrack and retroactively pay employees their August wages.
Another U.S.-based staffer leaked an email dated September 22 from the company’s “People & Culture Consultant,” which Read: “We regret to inform you that we will not be able to fund payroll as expected today, however, we have been assured that funds are on their way.”
La Perla was purchased by a private equity firm once known as Sapinda (now known as Tennor) in 2018, though the company has mounting losses of 48.8 million euros (about $51.7 million) pre-tax on sales in 2022.
La Perla did not immediately respond to Entrepreneur’s request for comment.
