“At M.Gemi, we are reinventing luxury, starting with shoes,” says the blurb on the high-end Italian footwear site. It sells direct from small family factories to US consumers at reasonable prices (around £150, which is cheaper than the large luxury brands), with new lines added at 10am each Monday.

Founded in March 2015, it is part of the Boston-based ecommerce incubator Launch, which was set up by Ben Fischman and Ted McNamara to create and fund new businesses. “I believe going direct to consumers and being vertically integrated in ecommerce is very important,” Fischman told the Beta Boston website.

“Selling other people’s products is inherently more challenging, because of the margins. Building brands that the consumer grows to love is critical.”

Launch plans to start two new businesses a year and wants the M.Gemi site to be more like entertainment than shopping, with McNamara stating that then “the customer will come on her own and more frequently, and you won’t have to pay to advertise”.