New potential purchaser for Galeria shops

A brand new candidate has emerged to amass a “substantial” variety of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof department shops. A brand new child on the block, trend chain Aachener, is thinking about some areas at present occupied by the ailing German division retailer chain.

Style entrepreneur

Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof reportedly wish to promote 90 of its 129 department shops to get out of the monetary bother the chain is in. Discovering patrons seems to be no straightforward job: the shops in query are fairly massive and positioned in smaller cities. Earlier talks with Markus Schön, the proprietor of on-line retailer buero.de, led to failure.

Nonetheless, a brand new candidate has come ahead: trend entrepreneur Friedrich Göbel, founding father of the multi-brand chain Aachener. Solely energetic for one 12 months, the style chain already has six branches (three of that are in former Galeria premises). Göbel wish to proceed rising, however it isn’t clear what number of branches he wish to take over. Talks are ongoing and would contain “a bigger quantity” of shops, commerce journal Textilwirtschaft stories.

Monetary issues

Galeria has been dealing with main monetary issues for years: the division retailer chain has too many retailers and lacks a pointy profile. The merger between Karstadt and Kaufhof introduced no aid and the pandemic solely exacerbated the issues. Current restructuring and even monetary injections from the German authorities have proved inadequate to refloat the corporate: since November, the retailer has been granted safety in opposition to its collectors.

Galeria’s Belgian subsidiary Inno, in the meantime, isn’t affected by the issues in Germany. The chain with fifteen department shops carried out a profitable repositioning and even closed 2022 with a revenue.