Department store
Galeria looks back behind the expectations
A year after the restart of Galeria, the management is obviously not so satisfied. The head of the department store chain gives several reasons.
Galeria boss Bernd Beetz has cautioned to the economic development of the department store chain. “At the moment we are a little behind our own expectations,” he said in an interview with the magazine “Focus”. For 2025 he still expected to “be seen all year round with all the houses in the black.
According to Betetz, there are several problems pressing the company’s business. In addition to the “almost depressed consumer stone position of the Germans”, he is concerned about security in the cities. “Take the bad attacks from Berlin to Mannheim. The effects are really brutal. They still feel our house in Mannheim,” said Beetz to the “Focus”.
According to the Galeria owner, this has a particularly important effect on the purchasing behavior of women. “In some cities, we register a growing shyness in many of the shy to be in the city center after dark.”
Branches are modernized
Betetz had already announced in January to want to modernize the Galeria branches over the next five years. There is a fixed renovation plan, he told the “Handelsblatt”. In some locations, more extensive renovation measures are planned, and others can already have a big change with smaller modernizations. “Since all houses write black, we can finance the conversion and investments into the houses internally,” said Beetz at the time.
The department store recently announced cooperation with the sporting goods dealer Decathlon and the food discounter Lidl.
Galeria slipped into bankruptcy again in 2023. In the summer of 2024, the court gave the green light for the restart and the takeover by the new owners: the US investment company NRDC and a participation company of the entrepreneur Bernd Beetz. Nine branches had to close in the course of bankruptcy, 83 are left.
dpa
Source: Stern
