“We must seize the moment, and that is what we intend to do,” declared Kai Kächelein, director of sales and marketing at Hagebau. The company aims to build primarily on the growing familiarity of the Hagebau brand brought about by the Hagebau store system.
The concentration on the brand is to be reflected in the external appearance of partner businesses also: the Hagebau stores with their strong signal red and the speciality stores always featuring the red octagon as a brand logo.
At the same time, the company, headquartered in Soltau, is focusing more closely on the online trade and cross-channel retailing. The retail group already occupied a favourable position in the German market in this business and its Baumarkt direkt joint venture operated with the German mail order giant Otto Group increased its sales by 10.3 per cent in fiscal 2013/2014 (ended February) to € 221 mio.
The Hagebau Group ended the year 2013 with an increase in sales of 1.7 per cent to € 5.5 bn. Its retailers in Germany and Austria transacted external sales worth € 2.0 bn; this figure is expected to rise to € 2.3 bn for 2014, the company says.
However, growth rates are turning out to be much higher in 2014. The DIY store group is benefiting from the bankruptcy of its rival Praktiker and the latter’s second distribution channel Max Bahr. By the middle of the year Hagebau partners had acquired 19 former Praktiker and Max Bahr stores in Germany and three in Luxembourg…