The wholesale shoe retailer and logistics service provider HR Group is being discontinued.
The insolvent company had been looking for new investors for a long time. However, interested parties were unable to present a viable concept, a spokesman for the insolvency administrator Christian Gerloff – from the law firm Gerloff Liebler Rechtsanwälte – confirmed when asked by FashionUnited. Several media outlets, including the daily newspaper Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung, had previously reported on it.
“The efforts to achieve continuation of business operations through an investor process proved to be very difficult given the ongoing crisis in the German shoe trade and the general consumer reluctance,” said the spokesman.
This now means that the majority of the approximately 750 employees of the affected HR companies were laid off at the end of November 2023. The group will separate from the remaining employees at the end of January. There is currently a small team handling business operations.
The HR Group had to file for preliminary insolvency for nine German companies at the Osnabrück district court in April 2023 after a lengthy restructuring had already been initiated, including the sale of the shoe retailer Reno. What remained after the sale were the systems business and logistics areas.
The bankruptcy of Reno in March 2023 is said to have triggered the proceedings of the former owner, who still worked with the shoe retailer as a service provider in the areas of IT and logistics.