Beneficiaries of the corona pandemic are few and far between. One of them is the Green Earth: The eco-pioneer from the Almtal increased sales in the past financial year (as of July 31) by 13.8 percent to around 76 million euros, after the plus in the previous year was 16.4 percent had. Yesterday, Thursday, the Green Earth did not mention earnings figures in a press release. The number of employees rose by 45 to 545.
According to the two owners and managing directors Kuno Haas and Reinhard Kepplinger, this growth can be traced back to the plus in online trading. Green Earth now sells almost every second product of its 13,000 mattresses and 54,000 cushions annually online. In the first year of the crisis, the online share of total revenue was a third.
The rest is accounted for by telephone sales and brick-and-mortar business. The latter should get a boost again with the end of the fourth lockdown in Upper Austria.
During the corona pandemic, the furniture retailer’s decision to become even greener matured. Green Earth has been shipping furniture, mattresses and bedding free of plastic since autumn. In addition, all company and office buildings have been converted to a climate-neutral electricity and energy supply. The plans also envisage becoming CO2-neutral from raw material extraction to delivery by 2025 and to dispense with fossil fuels by 2028.
“Even if we have grown strongly over the past 37 years, we can only act if this goal is more important than pure sales and profit maximization,” says Kepplinger.
Expansion plans in Scharnstein
In the meantime, there has not yet been a decision on further expansion plans in the Almtal. As reported, the company wants to build the “Green Earth Campus on the Alm River” on the site of the former Redtenbacher scythe factory. The evaluation phase is still ongoing, details should be announced in the spring, says Green Earth at the request of OÖNachrichten.
The company premises in Scharnstein are to be built on around 60,000 square meters. The adventure world opened three years ago in Pettenbach is about three times as large.
Source: Nachrichten
