According to the will of the new Galeria boss Olivier van den Bossche, the branches of the department store group should focus much more on local characteristics when it comes to the range. The manager promised “much more locality” in the offers of the Galeria houses, as he told the specialist medium “Textilwirtschaft”. In places with high purchasing power like Bad Homburg, “we don’t have to have big Esprit or Tim Tailor shops. We can even sell Paul&Shark there,” says van den Bossche. Paul&Shark is a high-priced fashion brand. The company also has “huge potential” with higher-quality brands in places like Munich-Schwabing.
In other branches such as Cologne-Nippes, on the other hand, the range of brands has to be adapted more to young families with an average income. “We will come to a much greater extent to making such differences between our branches in order to benefit from local conditions,” said van den Bossche, who was head of Galeria Kaufhof in Cologne between 2014 and 2017. In the meantime, Kaufhof and Karstadt have been combined under the umbrella of the Austrian company Signa to form Galeria.
Galeria has gone through insolvency proceedings, as a result of which numerous branches of the Essen department store group have had to close. Around 90 of the previous 129 houses are to remain. Thousands of jobs will be lost. Germany’s only nationwide department store group had already gone through a similar process in 2020.
The department store manager was optimistic that he would be able to offer more top fashion brands in the future: “I can’t name any names yet, but we’ve already convinced upmarket brands to come to Galeria. Even those who have already said ‘no’ five times before.” (dpa)