Campaign For A Living Venice

Property management company DFS Italia has communicated that it will cease activities in September 2025. The holding company Regia, which owns the property, has less than a year to look for a new manager

By Eugene Pendolini

November 14, 2024

The Fondaco dei Tedeschi is headed towards closure, and the 226 employees of the luxury store in Rialto fear the risks of unemployment and layoffs.

On the morning of November 14, DFS Italia, the company which manages the enormous four-story store inside the former post office headquarters in the San Marco district, communicated its intention to close the shopping center to the trade unions.

In fact, there have been rumors about the closure for some time due to constantly deficient budgets and difficulties in maintaining a business model aimed primarily at the Eastern tourist market. Now it has been made official.

The store is scheduled to close in September 2025. Sabrina Benetton’s holding company Regia, which owns the property, purchased from the State Property Agency in 2008, will therefore have less than a year to find a new manager for the store.

The municipality of Venice has also been informed of the imminent closure. The councilor for social cohesion, Simone Venturini, has already expressed great concern on behalf of the municipal administration for the future of the workers

Union representatives have already been summoned by Ca’ Farsetti. “We were meeting in the Council when we learned today with great disappointment and concern of DFS Group’s decision to cease all its commercial activities in Italy”, explains Councilor Venturini, “which also involves the closure of the DFS’s activity inside the Fontego dei Tedeschi. If confirmed, this choice will have a dramatic impact on 226 people, in addition to the related industries in our territory, and for their families. DFS employees are not just numbers, they are people who, with their work, contribute to making Venice the unique city that we know and love. We are greatly disappointed by the fact that we never received any kind of advance notice, otherwise as a municipal administration we would have worked together with all the parties involved to identify possible alternative paths from such a drastic solution. We are talking about people, families and not numbers. In agreement with Mayor Luigi Brugnaro, I urgently called the trade unions to take stock of the situation and define the next initiatives, placing the safeguarding of the employees’ professional careers at the center in this difficult moment. We will immediately discuss the matter with the Veneto Region and with the other institutions involved in the matter”.

The opening of T Fondaco, the name of the shopping center, dates back to 2016. Inside there are 65 designer boutiques that wind along the porticoes of the three floors that open onto the courtyard inside the building, which has maintained its sixteenth-century structure, animated however by fire-red escalators to go up and stairs sparkling with golden flashes to go down, with a brand new terrace that has a breathtaking view from the highest roof in the city.

DFS Group is a luxury retailer headquartered in Hong Kong. Founded in 1960, its network consists of over 420 stores, including duty-free shops in 13 international airports and 23 Galleria stores downtown, as well as affiliated locations and resorts. DFS is part of the luxury group LVMH.

The Unions

“We had heard that the business was suffering, but we certainly could not have expected such a drastic decision from DFS”. Caterina Boato of Filcams Venezia, Nicola Pegoraro of Fisascat Venezia and Fabio Marchiori of Uiltucs Venezia, the three category secretaries, learned about the fate of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi only on Thursday morning, November 14.

“The RSAs have been summoned – they confirm – to communicate the start of the mobility procedure. It emerges that since 2020, DFS has accumulated more than 100 million euros in losses in Venice alone. The core business of the Fondaco was “travel retail”, trips organized for luxury shopping, especially from the Asian market. In recent years, the losses in Venice had been partly covered by the profits accumulated by DFS around the world. But the luxury market is experiencing an epochal crisis, and the closure of the Venice property is only one part of a broader restructuring process by DFS, which will also close other locations”.

“We have also been informed – the three unionists add – that DFS will have to return the property to the owner, Edizione Holding, in September 2025. It is therefore presumable that the stores will close no later than next spring”.

Source: La Nuova di Venezia e Mestre