News / Business
Megalo! Franco Cozzo store to reopen this month
Late furniture retailer would be proud, says daughter
Mark Phillips
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The rumours are true.
Brunswick’s legendary Franco Cozzo store will reopen later this month.
Although the actual date has not been locked down and the windows are still shrouded from the inside with black plastic sheeting, Cozzo’s youngest daughter Alessia has confirmed the family is on track to opening its doors towards the end of July.
The news comes two-and-a-half years after the death at the age of 88 of Franco Cozzo, who would be proud of the plans to re-open the store, according to Alessia.
And while the Baroque imported Italian furniture for which Franco Cozzo became famous will continue to be sold, there will be some changes, including the possibility of a large mural of him on an external wall.
The store is the last remaining of the trinity of “Norda Melbin, Brunzawick and Footisgray” which were Franco Cozzo’s advertising catchphrase in his 1980s and 1990s heyday on Melbourne television screens.
Alessia Cozzo said her father first opened the store on the corner of Sydney Road and Victoria Street in the early-1980s and continued running it until it was closed during the Covid pandemic in 2021.
She will be the face of the reopened store with her sisters Lisa, Diana and Angelina and mother Assunta working behind-the-scenes.
Some sceptics may raise a quizzical eyebrow, having heard this before, but Alessia Cozzo said plans to reopen the store were on track.
“[The date] is not 100% yet but it will be towards the last week in July,” Alessia said.
“We’re planning to do a grand opening so people can come in and have a look.”
Franco Cozzo was a larger-than-life figure in Melbourne for many years on the back of his television advertisements where he would spruik his furniture in Italian, Greek and mangled English, usually bethroned on one of his imported arm chairs.
Born in Sicily in 1935, he migrated to Australia in 1956 and first came to fame hosting a short-lived Italian language variety show Carosello on television in the late-1960s.
He opened his first furniture store in North Melbourne, expanding his empire to Footscray and Brunswick which had large southern European populations at the time.
The extravagant furniture Cozzo sold was not to everyone’s taste, but found a solid market among first generation migrant families.
In 2021, he was the subject of a feature length documentary, Palazzo Di Cozzo, directed by Madeleine Martiniello.
He died in December 2023.
Alessia Cozzo said there had been no expectation from her father to continue the store after he died.
“He didn’t expect us to do anything … but in regard to carrying on his legacy that is what we wanted to do to honour him, and we’re lucky to be in a position that we can,” she said.
“He would be so happy and so proud.”
In 2018, a planning permit application was lodged for an apartment building above the Brunswick store.
She said when the store reopens, it will display furniture in both its street level and an upstairs showrooms and there will be some changes.
“In the future we hope to bring in more modern furniture while continuing with the style that we’ve got which – believe or not – does still sell.
“On the outside, we’re hoping to repaint it because the graffiti is getting out of hand so hopefully that will get resprayed.
“But we’re also planning to possibly put a mural up of Dad [on the Victoria Street] side.”
The mural would partly revive plans from late last decade, when the Cozzo family had hoped to cash in on the prominence of the Brunswick property by developing an apartment tower above it.
High-profile Melbourne architectural firm Fender Katsilidis (best known for the Eureka Tower) drew up plans for a mid-rise building with 32 dwellings that would have been called Franco Apartments.
An application for a planning permit was lodged with the then Moreland Council in September 2018, but the development never went ahead.
A large north-facing mural would have been a major feature of the project.
The Footscray Franco Cozzo store was sold years ago and is now a themed brewpub.
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