Chain wants special regulation
Galeria is hoping for monthly Sunday shopping
May 10, 2024, 10:06 a.m
Listen to article
This audio version was artificially generated. More info | Send feedback
According to a media report, the new owners of Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof want to invest less than Signa had planned. Regular Sunday shopping is intended to boost business. The department store chain is dependent on politics.
Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof is focusing on Sunday shopping when reorienting its department stores. This is reported by “Spiegel”, citing the environment of the investor consortium. The new owners, the US investor Richard Baker and the German entrepreneur Bernd Beetz, are hoping for support from the states and municipalities for the Galeria locations. “Our department stores play a huge role in revitalizing city centers,” is their argument. The proposal: In the future, every house could open once a month, including on a Sunday. In this way, Galeria could act as a crowd puller for cities – and increase its own sales.
According to information from the magazine, Baker and Beetz are planning to invest up to 100 million euros over the next two to three years in order to modernize the branches. The previous owner Signa had promised 200 million euros in March last year, half of it as a loan.
At the same time, costs should now fall, especially in administration. Of the 92 branches so far, 16 are to close; the creditors’ meeting will make a final decision on this at the end of May. There is still hope for the department stores in Oldenburg, Berlin-Spandau and Mannheim, which are on the list of planned closures. It is said that there are “positive developments” in the negotiations with the landlords.
Significantly more shop-in-shops planned
In the remaining branches, the plan is to no longer serve a significantly larger portion of the space ourselves, but rather to allocate it directly to individual branded goods manufacturers as so-called shop-in-shops. This means that the retail group does not have to bear the risk of goods on these areas itself. This concession business currently accounts for just under 7 percent of Galeria’s recent sales of around 2.5 billion euros.
In the medium term, investors believe the ratio should rise to up to 40 percent. In addition, Galeria plans to concentrate the product range in the future 70 department stores on the product categories perfumes and cosmetics, women’s underwear, handbags, shoes and accessories. In other categories, such as household goods, the insolvent trading company wants to concentrate on a smaller selection of top-selling products in the future.