Italy's Feltrinelli, a successful trade imprint and owner of a large chain of book and media stores, has reached an agreement to acquire the Rizzoli bookstore chain. The new combination easily dominates the book and media retail scene in that country. The Rizzoli chain, until now 100% owned by the Rizzoli book group, consists of 37 retail outlets located throughout Italy under the logos Rizzoli, Rizzoli Store and Finlibri. Sales for the retail group came to some 70 billion lire last year (with one U.S. dollar then worth about 2,200 lire), although it had a loss of some two billion lire.
Feltrinelli picked up the Rizzolis for a reported purchase price of 41 billion lire, which includes Feltrinelli taking on the Rizzoli chain's outstanding debt. Excluded from the sale are Rizzoli's flagship bookstore in the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan and the bookstore in the Palazzo Grassi museum in Venice. When the sale is completed—on or before September 30—the Feltrinelli retail group will consist of 97 points of sale and will have about 450 billion lire in revenues.
Rizzoli will continue to focus on its core businesses—trade, school and university-level books, as well as partworks sold on newsstands. Earlier this year, Rizzoli began phasing out its U.S. bookstores (News, May 14).
