Rinascente launches online store

Italian department store Rinascente has launched its first online store. The ecommerce website is part of parent Central Group’s omnichannel strategy. Rinascente’s online shop is only aimed at Italian customers for now.

For a long time, Rinascente has been skeptical of ecommerce. But now, due to the omnichannel plans of Central Group, the department store is finally online. The webshop from Rinascente is also a model for the KaDeWe, the famous department store in Berlin, which is also owned by Central Group.

The online shop only covers Italy

The launched ecommerce website initially will cover only Italy, but that might change in the future. The online shop offers around 15,000 products from 650 different brands in segments like fashion, beauty, food, and design. And since the luxury brands in the physical outlets mostly control their space themselves, the department store also want to use this concession model online. This means the top brands will have their own digital shop-in-shop at Rinascente.it.

Rinascente.it offers around 15,000 products.

‘We are finally able to unveil our online shop’

“After two-and-a-half years we are finally able to unveil our first ecommerce website. We have stalled for a while, but our top priority over the past few years was to complete the renovation of our physical stores. Now that we are happy with them, we can definitely launch the online store, which is meant to deeply reflect our brick-and-mortar experience”, CEO Pierluigi Cocchini said.

Part of omnichannel strategy

The physical stores from Rinascente will work synergistically with the online shop, which is part of the omnichannel strategy developed by Central Group, which acquired the Italian department store in May 2011.

Central Group acquired Rinascente in May 2011.