Tuesday, February 02, 2021
About 60 stores close
These Douglas branches are closing
Douglas is downsizing the branch network. Like the entire retail sector, the perfumery chain is also suffering from the lockdown. In the future, the company wants to focus even more on online business.
Because more and more people are shopping online, Germany's largest perfumery chain Douglas wants to close almost every seventh branch in this country. With the end of around 60 of the more than 430 branches, the group is reacting to the ever faster shifting of sales to the Internet, said Douglas boss Tina Müller.
Around 600 of the more than 5,200 employees in the German branches are losing their jobs. Douglas is closing more than every fifth branch in Europe – a total of around 500 of the 2,400 perfumeries to date. Around 2500 of the 20,000 Douglas employees are affected. The wave of closings affects shops in Italy and Spain in particular.
So far it is certain that the following branches in Germany will be closed:
- Aachen, Aquis Plaza
- Berlin, Schlossstrasse
- Berlin, Stromstrasse
- Bielefeld, Loom shopping center
- Dortmund, Thier Gallery
- Dresden, Seestrasse
- Düsseldorf, Nordstrasse
- Düsseldorf, Düsseldorf-Arcaden
- Düsseldorf, Schadow-Arcaden
- Essen, Altenessen shopping center
- Essen, Kettwiger Strasse
- Frankfurt, Borsigallee
- Hamburg, Altona, Neue Große Bergstrasse
- Hamburg, Europa Passage
- Hamburg, Volksdorf, Claus-Ferck-Strasse
- Cologne, Ehrenstrasse
- Cologne, Hohe Strasse
- Cologne, Neusser Strasse
- Cologne, Sülzburgstrasse
- Leipzig, Grimmaische Strasse
- Leipzig, Ludwigsburger Strasse
- Mönchengladbach, Stresemannstrasse
- Munich, Leopoldstrasse
- Munich, Passauer Strasse
- Paderborn, at the Rathausplatz
- Schwerte, Hüsingstrasse
- Stuttgart, Koenigstrasse
- Wuppertal, City Arkaden
Douglas boss Müller said she was confident that the reduced branch network "is sustainable for the next few years". But the trend towards online shopping will continue – how far cannot currently be predicted. Corona has accelerated this trend again.
The 2019/20 financial year, which was shaped by the Covid 19 pandemic, had given the company mixed results. Thanks to its strong online presence, Douglas was able to limit the impact of the pandemic on sales. It fell by 6.4 percent to 3.2 billion euros. But the operating result fell by 16.7 percent to 292 million euros. And the bottom line was that the group even had to report a loss of 517 million euros, not least because of high value adjustments.
Business on the Internet was particularly excellent. In the financial year that ended at the end of September, e-commerce sales rose by 40.6 percent to 822 million euros. In the 2020 calendar year, the perfumery chain even made more than a billion euros in sales on the Internet for the first time, said boss Müller. The e-commerce business is just as profitable as the business in the branches. Across Europe, Douglas’s online sales account for 25.4 percent of sales, and 39.9 percent in the important home market of Germany.
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