Italian department store group RinascenteFashionNetwork.com

The extensive two-day celebrations will fête the new look of the long-established luxury department store group’s Florentine branch, which “has been open since the 1990s and, for the first time since then, underwent a major renovation that began in 2018 and ended in spring 2021,” said Cocchini.
 
“From a structural point of view, every floor has been restored, preserving architectural materials that are typical of Florence, like marble, tuff, wood and ceramic. The renovation has given the interiors a quintessentially Florentine feel, mirroring the city’s aesthetic. In terms of our product range, we are focusing on artisanal brands. The retail area in the men’s and women’s footwear floors has doubled, and the same for menswear. We have also boosted the jewellery section. We have worked hard category-wise, increasingly introducing products that are attractive to Millennials
 

The ‘Be Florentine’ events will strengthen the connection between Rinascente and the Pitti Uomo show: from June 13, for two weeks, the store’s shop-windows will exclusively showcase the work of an emerging designer selected among the participants of the competition organised at Pitti Uomo by Incotex, in collaboration with Domus Academy, Naba and Istituto Marangoni

Rinascente Florence is the department store’s seventh-largest branch by retail area (approximately 4,000 square metres), but the fourth by revenue, after Milan Duomo and the group’s two Rome branches. The store is performing satisfactorily in the wake of the renovation, which followed those of the Turin and Rome Fiume branches.
 

Alongside physical retail, e-tail too is buoyant for Rinascente. “Our e-tail sales will be worth €100 million within three years. We are reaping the rewards of a targeted omni-channel strategy, in which our e-shop acts as a second gateway to the physical stores, which remain the core of our business model,” said Cocchini.
 
Rinascente was acquired in 2011 by Central Group, a family-owned Thai corporation. “We closed fiscal 2022 with a revenue just shy of that of 2019, approximately €800 million, despite the Covid pandemic’s aftermath in Q1 and the invasion of Ukraine. This year, we’re set to exceed our pre-Covid results, and we are planning to reach a revenue of €1 billion within the next 18 months,” concluded Cocchini.