Milan Looting Costs Retail Over €1 Million; Arc'teryx Boards Up

Milan retailers lost more than 1 million euros in damage and missed sales over the weekend, after looters infiltrated student protests against the cost of living and raided stores across the city's core shopping districts. Marco Barbieri, general secretary of Confcommercio Milano (the city's retail and services association), first estimated damage at over 500,000 euros after Saturday. He later said the figure more than doubled after fresh looting on Sunday.

The bill covers structural damage and lost revenue from forced early closures. It does not yet include stolen inventory. That accounting, for most chains, starts this week.

Which retailers were hit?

The looting concentrated on high-traffic areas: Duomo and San Babila squares, Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, Via Torino and the Brera district. Sportswear and mass-market chains took the heaviest hits, not luxury.

• A Foot Locker near San Babila was broken into; shoes and merchandise stolen, footage circulated on social media. A similar intrusion attempt hit its Turin store on Via Roma.
• Decathlon's Cairoli-area flagship, near the Castello Sforzesco, had storefront windows smashed; looters took sporting equipment and several bicycles. Staff and customers were inside during one attack. No injuries were reported.
• A Carrefour supermarket and a Champion store on Via Torino were targeted; Champion was broken into and looted on Sunday.
• Arc'teryx's Corso Garibaldi boutique was the most severely affected in Brera and stood boarded up with plywood on Monday.
• Stüssy, Mario Luca Giusti and a Dries Van Noten beauty and accessories boutique on Via Brera reported shattered or cracked windows.

What are the chains saying?

Foot Locker said it is "closely monitoring the situation following the incidents in France and Italy" and remains "in constant contact with our local teams to assess the impact of these events and determine the most appropriate measures for each affected location." The company gave no reopening dates and no estimate of merchandise losses. Similar incidents hit Turin, Bologna and Paris over the same weekend, so the exposure spans two markets, not one.

Decathlon's external and corporate communication manager for Italy, Nicoletta La Torre, said staff from other locations helped restabilize the Milan store, with "a comprehensive assessment of damages and stolen merchandise" to follow. A damage figure and a timeline were both absent. In an internal memo reviewed by WWD, Champion Europe, Middle East and Africa president Lorenzo Moretti praised store manager Marco Montaspro, who moved his team to an upper floor after attempting to protect the store alone. "We can replace broken windows, damaged stores and stolen merchandise. We cannot replace our people," Moretti wrote.

Arc'teryx said its Milan store "will reopen only when it's appropriate to do so," adding that all team members are safe. Birkenstock, whose Brera flagship stands near the boarded Arc'teryx unit, chose a split strategy: it stayed open Saturday because protests centered on the Duomo area, then closed Sunday and sent the whole team home. The company is monitoring locations across affected regions of France and Italy.

Who pays for the damage?

That question remains open. Carlo Sangalli, president of Confcommercio-Imprese per l'Italia, the national business confederation, visited damaged retailers including the Decathlon flagship with Milan mayor Giuseppe Sala on Monday. "The right to protest is sacrosanct, but it must be exercised within the framework of civil rules," Sangalli said. Confcommercio is "taking action to ensure that businesses that have suffered damage are compensated and can return to their normal activity as quickly as possible."

He named no compensation mechanism, no fund and no timeline. For multi-store chains, insurance and self-insurance will likely absorb the first layer of loss; for independent boutiques in Brera, the path to recovery is less clear. Sala called the weekend's scenes "unacceptable and unjustifiable" and warned that new unrest could erupt in the coming weeks — a signal that store-level risk protocols, not one-off repairs, are now the operational issue.

Luxury was largely spared, but not immune: Hermès and Chanel on Via Montenapoleone closed early Monday afternoon. Retailers now face a government security summit and a volatile protest calendar, with both reopening dates and compensation terms still undefined.