The Rebirth of the Department Store- Italian Style

- MILAN, ITALY

A visit to Milan is certain to include a walk around the Piazza del Duomo. One of the key anchors in this enormous walking and shopping area is La Rinascente, the upscale department store founded in 1865. (This is the place where Giorgio Armani got his start- dressing the windows- but that’s another story.)

Shopping there in the past was similar to visiting a Macy’s suburban C-store – the absence of better name brands and lacking the luster or modernity of say what you find at Harvey Nichols or Neiman Marcus. I even recall the lighting and visuals used to be quite compromised and outdated.

This past July La Rinacente unveiled what is being called a "design supermarket”. I visited in September, walked the lower level shops and saw an exciting combination of home and design objects that rivaled The Conran Shop. A modern bustling café circles the escalator's open architecture; a wall ‘sculpture’ in itself. Many of the goods are featured in a modern art museum-shop fashion. These include sophisticated dustpans and vases as well as notebooks and mugs by fashion designer Paul Smith. There is even a Conran shop-in-shop down there as well, the first I have seen. It makes sense since Sir Terrance does not have any of his own retail shops in Italy. Kartell and Wallpaper* magazine also set up shop there which definitely adds to the cool factor.

There was no sign of a recession here on a busy Saturday afternoon. The store was full of people and gave off a party atmosphere- interesting music that changed in each area. Large scale theatrics in cosmetics; it was teeming with dozens of fragrance models and cosmetic artists in action. Many of the major international designer and top luxury brand names were visible right from the sight-lines of the up escalator.

In 2005 the company recruited the CEO who was credited with turning the ailing Selfridges department store around. Vittorio Radice who was also the Managing Director for Habitat UK is responsible for this resurrection. When I worked with Vittorio on furniture product development at Conran’s Habitat he was constantly pushing the merchandisers to go after a similar visual approach- a ‘fresh from the market’ look in the shops. He wanted to see towering stacks of new dinnerware filling large baskets that may have just been cracked open from a crate, as well as goods on dining tables that looked like they were just stocked up.

How appropriate that La Rinascente is derived from rinascita - means "rebirth" in Italian. Perhaps this is the inspiration the management team used to make such a bold new business introduction and major remodel in such a troubled economy.

We will have to watch the sales and earnings of La Rinascente in the future but the launch of such fresh and new idea seems to have paid off from the glimpse I saw in the high foot traffic and number of shopping bags heading out the door.


www.DesignSuperMarket.it/