Central Group reshuffles Europe luxury retail leadership, boosts strategy and buying

Central Group stopped treating Europe like a string of trophy assets and started treating it like a single luxury operating system. By promoting Rinascente chief executive Pierluigi Cocchini into a broader European role and elevating Giuseppe D’Amato to chief commercial officer Europe, the Thai group made one thing clear: the next fight is not just for beautiful stores, but for who controls buying, brand access and the customer experience across the continent.

The setup is big. Central Group’s European luxury network stretches across seven countries and includes Selfridges in the U.K., Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland, de Bijenkorf in the Netherlands, KaDeWe Group in Germany, Globus in Switzerland, Rinascente in Italy and Illum in Denmark. Cocchini will oversee the European business from Milan, which makes sense because Rinascente is still the symbolic anchor in the portfolio, even after the group spread its footprint far beyond Italy.

D’Amato’s remit is the sharper tell. He had been Rinascente’s buying and merchandising director, and his new European brief covers portfolio management, buying, marketing and retail media development. That is not cosmetic reshuffling. It points to a more centralized commercial brain for a business that has spent years buying up department-store names with strong local identities and now wants them to work together without losing their own accents. Chart Chirathivat was also named chief strategy officer Europe, giving the group another layer focused on partnerships with global luxury houses and on positioning the banners as preferred launch pads for brands and special projects.

The move lands with extra force because Rinascente is not some new experiment. Its roots go back to 1865, when the Bocconi brothers opened a shop in Milan, and it adopted the Rinascente name in 1917. The chain now has nine stores in Italy, and the Milan flagship remains one of the most important locations in the whole Central orbit. Central Group first entered Europe with Rinascente in 2011, then added Illum in 2013, KaDeWe in 2015, Globus in 2020 and Selfridges Group in 2022. That timeline tells the story: build the empire first, then tighten the controls.

It also follows Central Group’s deeper strategic reset. In September 2025, Central Retail Corporation said it had received an offer from major shareholder Harng Central Department Store to buy Rinascente for 250 million euros, with expected post-tax profit of about 6 billion baht. The sale was framed as part of a bigger pivot toward Thailand, Vietnam and Southeast Asia, but the European leadership shake-up shows Central is not walking away from luxury retail. It is trying to run it harder, cleaner and closer to the center.