MILAN — The chief executive officer of Douglas Italia Fabio Pampani has been promoted to oversee the beauty retailer’s operations in Spain and Portugal as well. Effective March, Pampani will be the CEO of Douglas South Europe with the goal of strengthening the company’s presence in this area.
In a similar move, Marco Giorgetta, who is the chief financial officer of the perfumery chain’s Italian business, has also been contextually promoted to oversee and coordinate the financial activities in the three markets.
Pampani was named CEO of Douglas Italia in 2017. As reported, that year the German beauty chain made a series of purchases, including the key acquisition of Leading Luxury Group, the parent company of Limoni and La Gardenia, Italy’s two biggest selective beauty chains in terms of door count, which at the time was around 500 stores between them. Thanks to the deal, the Douglas sale points in the market climbed from 100 doors to roughly 600 units.
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In particular, Pampani was originally at the helm of La Gardenia and successively of the LLG Limoni La Gardenia company, before landing the CEO role at Douglas Italia.
Last week, Douglas Italia announced the closure of 17 stores by the end of March, mainly due to the significant impact of the pandemic on profitability.
To wit, last month the Munich-based group already announced that due to a sustained shift in consumer behavior toward online shopping, approximately 500 of its 2,400 stores in Europe — mostly in Southern Europe — would be shuttered by fall 2022. Of the closures, there will be about 60 in Germany, where Douglas has close to 430 stores.
The store closures, plus other measures, are expected to result in operating profit of around 120 million euros per year, starting from the group’s next fiscal year onward.
In the 2019-20 fiscal year, Douglas’ operating profit declined 16.7 percent to 292 million euros, mostly due to the brick-and-mortar business’ slowdown because of COVID-19-related lockdowns and investments in expanding the group’s e-commerce activity.
Sales at the Munich-based company reached 3.2 billion euros in its fiscal year ended Sept. 30, 2020.