Purchase ring
The purchase ring AG was a purchasing cooperative of retailers and business in their last years of operation also some of their own stores. The company was based in Düsseldorf from beginning to end . Kaufring AG and its predecessor companies existed from 1921 to 2002.
history
Kaufring AG was founded on December 22nd, 1921 by 28 merchants as the “Rheinisch-Westfälischer business houses purchasing cooperative (ERWEGE)”. All retailers remained independent and bundled their purchases of household goods in order to maintain greater market strength. The ERWEGE was thus a cooperative of household goods dealers.
At the beginning of the 1930s, ERWEGE's range of goods was expanded to include textiles and food. As a result of the expansion, ERWEGE was able to procure all everyday items for its dealers. This made the cooperative much more attractive; this led to a brisk influx of new entrants. In addition to textile shops and department stores, the so-called unit price shops were mainly included in the cooperative. Flat-price businesses in particular were interested in more calculable prices, as they sold all goods at fixed prices and the cooperative made their lives easier. The prices in unit price transactions were visible beforehand and were the same for everyone, and it was also usually not possible to write to them ( Karstadt and Woolworth were among the first large chains in Germany with this price system).
After the currency reform in 1948, the cooperative began to rebuild the headquarters and the West German department stores. For a new start, the cooperative was also renamed: ERWEGE became KAUFRING eG under General Director Dr. Otto W. Meyer, Düsseldorf. In the 1960s, after the years of the economic miracle, there was an increasing demand for international goods. That is why Kaufring eG founded purchasing agencies around the world, mainly in Europe. At that time, people particularly liked to go abroad on vacation, especially to the relatively close European neighbors. The locations of the purchasing agencies were: Barcelona ( Spain ), Hong Kong (then a colony of Great Britain ), London (Great Britain), Milan ( Italy ), New York ( USA ), Paris ( France ), Tokyo ( Japan ) and Vienna ( Austria ).
In 1988 Kaufring eG was converted into an AG . In addition, the shareholders decided to jointly implement sales promotion measures through more uniform advertising and product range optimization.
Cooperations
With the two department store groups Hertie and Horten AG (third and fourth largest department store groups in the 1980s after Karstadt and Kaufhof ), Kaufring AG found partners for purchasing in order to still be able to show its size in the increasingly tough market. In 1989, together with Horten AG, the “Merkur Purchasing Company Horten-Kaufring mbH” was founded, in which both partners held 50%. From 1995 the German Woolworth took over the Horten share. The “Sono-Centra” purchasing company was founded in 1990 specifically for the Asian region. Kaufring AG had a one-third stake in this; its partners were Horten and Hertie , who each also held a third of the shares.
initial public offering
On October 1, 1991 the company, which had been trading as an AG three years earlier, went public. The share was traded on the stock exchanges in Düsseldorf, Frankfurt (Main) and Munich.
Entry into retail
After the IPO it was decided that Kaufring AG should enter the stationary retail sector with its own branches (department stores). The was the first Horten AG separated out as a takeover candidate. They have already worked together with Horten AG, and shortly before that, Horten had developed the successful Galeria concept and was represented with numerous branches throughout Germany. In 1992, Kaufring AG acquired a 5% share in Horten AG through West LB. But Kaufhof was also interested in hoarding, which ultimately also took over Horten AG in 1994. Despite the failure, the way remained clear and Kaufring AG took over some of its own customers, i. H. Department stores that were previously independent partners.
J.Gg. Rupprecht GmbH
Under the name J.Gg. Rupprecht has been running Kaufring AG since the turn of the year 1992/1993, ten smaller department stores, which Horten AG had sold. The branches were mostly in smaller towns or districts, such as Gevelsberg, Viersen or Duisburg-Marxloh. Profitability was problematic from the start. Whenever possible, they tried to bring attractive partners into the branches. Media-Markt in Duisburg and Strauss Innovation in Viersen, for example, moved into the branches in order to attract more customers to the location, which was not always the best in the respective city.
Former branches of J.Gg. Rupprecht GmbH (complete):
- Andernach, Hochstrasse 80
- Baden-Baden, Lange Straße 44 (only 1993–1995, since then Wagener department store)
- Bergheim (Erft), Südweststraße 13 (demolished, from 2008 Kaufland)
- Bochum, Old Market 6
- Duisburg, August-Bebel-Platz 20 (today "Marxloh Center")
- Gevelsberg, Mittelstraße 27 (today smaller retail units)
- Heidenheim, Karlstraße 12 (broken off, today "Schlossarkaden")
- Pirmasens, Hauptstrasse 13
- Viersen, Löhstraße 23 (canceled, now a new shopping center)
- Wetzlar (today Adler fashion store)
- Worms, Am Römischen Kaiser 1
The 75th anniversary was celebrated in 1996, but this was also the time of the descent. The ex-hoarding houses were not profitable as a package, and some were even extremely deficient. The other department stores acquired for this purpose could hardly achieve any synergies, and they were all allowed to keep their old names, so that there was no uniform market presence, which particularly drove up advertising costs. The hodgepodge of department stores was not a grown structure either, only the Rupprecht stores had a common background with Horten AG . Kaufring AG wanted to buy large for the anniversary and was rushing to take over.
The loss-making Rupprecht branches were held for (too) long, their poor economic situation was known and announced in press releases. Nevertheless, none of the branches should be closed initially. After some back and forth, however, the decision was made to partially close the branches or to restructure them by shedding particularly lossy departments, such as the department store-restaurant subsidy. Shortly before the end of Kaufring AG (2001), all branches were closed, but for the AG that came too late, too much money was put into a bottomless pit and the order quantities were not adjusted sufficiently to reflect the lower turnover .
insolvency
In 2001 the Kaufring AG was economically stricken. In a last emergency action, the deficient J.Gg. Rupprecht houses (at that time only 8 of the original 10 houses were still in operation), so a last minute bankruptcy could be prevented. There was another upswing for a short time in the second half of the year, during which it initially looked as if a shrunken Kaufring AG could survive. But then, after the brief upswing, there was another loss-making phase, the closed department stores and the customers' department stores and specialty stores that were now abandoned led to a huge drop in sales in the Christmas business.
After Kaufring AG sat on unsold goods and its market presence had sunk, it was looking for cooperation partners, as they once existed in the form of Hertie and Horten AG and which were not fully replaced by Woolworth. On June 6, 2001, Kaufrings AG and EK Großeinkauf eG, Bielefeld (today EK / servicegroup ) announced that they wanted to merge their wholesale activities by January 1, 2002 in one company in which both should participate equally. According to the press release of November 5, 2001, EK should become the basis of the company and Kaufring should bring in the department store know-how. On December 21, 2001, Kaufring announced in an ad hoc announcement that the restructuring concept had failed because the debt relief did not work as planned. The bankruptcy petition was filed on December 27, 2001. Competitors used this to poach customers. On March 1, 2002 the bankruptcy proceedings were opened. The aim was to continue the intact parts of the company, but the main point of the creditor banks was the sale of the site at Düsseldorf Airport, as large portions of the debts could have been settled with the value of the site. However, the sale failed and Kaufring AG was wound up. Parts of the purchase ring are continued today by EK / servicegroup. These include: B. the member data center and the freight pool. Many of the former Kaufring customers are now members there too.
The Kaufring brand has not completely disappeared to this day, some former customers of Kaufring AG continue to operate under this name. There are two Kaufring department stores in Munich (a third branch closed in 2017), one of which only opened in 2009, years after Kaufring AG went bankrupt. Other company names of department stores / specialist shops, such as "Ring-Center", are reminiscent of one of the largest German retail cooperatives. Even years after the end of Kaufring AG, the old cooperative notice "A Kaufring House" still stood on some old shops.
swell
- ^ "Market and Markets", Kaufring Yearbook 1995 .
- ↑ http://www.kaufring-muenchen.de
- Kaufring press releases ( [1] ff.)