‘A true icon’: Melbourne mourns death of renowned furniture salesman Franco Cozzo

Melburnians are mourning the death of renowned furniture salesman Franco Cozzo, who has died aged 88.

Cozzo’s family announced his death on social media on Wednesday night.

“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our beloved Franco Cozzo,” they said. “He was surrounded by his loving wife and family. We would greatly appreciate that our privacy be respected during this time.”

Born in Sicily in 1935, Cozzo migrated to Australia in 1957 and began selling ornate Italian furniture in Melbourne’s north and west. He was an enthusiastic adopter of television, producing Australia’s first Italian-language TV show, Carosello, before moving into more direct advertising.

Over the 1980s and 90s, his name became synonymous with the western suburb of Footscray, where he had one of his eponymous furniture showrooms. He had another in North Melbourne for a time, and a third on Sydney Road, Brunswick.

Through his multilingual television ads, in which he spruiked furniture in English, Italian and Greek, Cozzo became a visible and recognised representative of Melbourne’s European migrant community.

Franco Cozze TV ad from the 1980s.

His distinctive three-syllable pronunciation of “Footscray” became absorbed into the city’s vocabulary.

The Footscray furniture showroom occupied the premises in Hopkins Street for 50 years, until Cozzo sold it to developers in 2018 for about $7m. The Footscray store is now being outfitted as a craft brewery and venue, with design elements dedicated to Cozzo’s distinctive aesthetic.

A mural of Cozzo, painted by a group of street artists in 2015, still adorns the side of the building.

Cozzo was a passionate supporter of the AFL’s Western (née Footscray) Bulldogs. The club has referenced his store and the businessman in their social media posts on multiple occasions, and in 2017 in a match against Richmond, ran through a banner saying: “We’ve got flair / We’ve got guile / Richmond have Ikea / We have Franco Cozzo style.”

When the team played in the 2016 Grand Final, which would result in their second-ever premiership, Cozzo decked himself and the showroom out in team colours, with signs saying “Go Doggies”, and sat in the doorway of the building, greeting passersby.

The club responded to the news of his death on Instagram on Wednesday night, saying: “A Footscray icon. RIP.”

Cozzo’s reputation as a stalwart of Melbourne’s western suburbs was immortalised in a 2021 feature documentary, Palazzo di Cozzo.

In May this year, the then-Victorian premier Daniel Andrews listed Cozzo’s Footscray store – along with the notorious Montague Street Bridge and Flinders Street Station – as one of his seven “human-made wonders of Melbourne”.

In comments made to the Age on Wednesday, Cozzo’s wife, Assunta, thanked the public for their support of Cozzo throughout his life. “We want his legacy to forever be remembered as he was a true icon to multiple people around the world,” she said.