Negotiate with Style

The most important part of a negotiation often happens before anyone says a word. Carlo Pignataro has spent a career inside the international luxury industry, a world where a reputation takes decades to build and can be undone in a single afternoon. In seventeen true stories, drawn from jewellery houses, fashion brands, boutiques and boardrooms across the globe, he reveals what that world taught him about reading a room, holding a standard, and treating the person across the table with dignity, even when you disagree. A princess returns a flawless bracelet, and the complaint is not about the bracelet. A retailer walks into a meeting that has been staged, before he arrives, to make him feel small. A routine request for a discount becomes a lesson in the power of silence. Two partners win a room over a kitchen table, only to watch what they built slip away. A relationship worth years is undone at a trade fair booth in a single afternoon. And in the final story, Pignataro turns the lens on himself, including the parts that do not flatter him. Who this book is for Anyone who sells, buys, manages, advises or simply finds themselves across the table from someone who wants something different. It is for people who negotiate for a living, people who want to become better at it, and anyone who has ever lost ground in a conversation and still cannot work out how. Each story carries a lesson you can use the next morning. None of them is delivered as a lecture. Negotiation is about perspective. The wider the perspective, the better the chance of an outcome everyone can live with. About the author Carlo Pignataro is an author, consultant and speaker whose career has been shaped by more than 20 years inside the international luxury industry. His experience includes managerial roles with Damiani, Gucci and Al Tayer Group, as well as work with leading international brands and organisations. He is the author of the Style series, including Sell with Style, Serve with Style and Negotiate with Style, and hosts Lux & Friends, a podcast exploring the people and ideas shaping the world through the lens of luxury.