Leipzig commission and wholesale book trade
| Leipziger Kommissions- und Großbuchhandelsgesellschaft mbH (LKG) | |
|---|---|
| legal form | Company with limited liability |
| founding | 1946 |
| Seat | Rötha - aspen grove |
| management | Frank Schulze; Kai Große |
| Number of employees | 160 (2020) |
| sales | EUR 150 million |
| Branch | Intermediate book trade [publisher delivery] |
| Website | www.lkg.eu |
The Leipziger Kommissions- und Großbuchhandelsgesellschaft (LKG) is a German distribution company based in Rötha-Espenhain. In the GDR it was the market leader in the state-owned intermediate book trade. After German reunification and the reprivatisation of the company in 1992, LKG succeeded in asserting itself on the German market as a whole. Today the company has 160 employees who generate a turnover of 150 million euros (as of 2020).
history
Beginnings and the GDR period
The Leipziger Kommissions- und Großbuchhandelsgesellschaft mbH was founded on June 14, 1946 by Karl Klaer and Walter Bleck. The company's beginnings were modest at first: Equipped with a mail order truck, three hand trucks, a packing table, three desks, nine chairs and a defective typewriter, LKG started its work with seven employees on an area of 43 m² in the ruins of the Leipzig bookseller's house. By the end of 1947, LKG had already delivered 15 publishers to 384 clients both in the Soviet zone of occupation and in the western zones. The currency reform of June 20, 1948 plunged the LKG into a severe liquidity crisis, as a result of which the private company became party-owned in 1949.
By 1951 the LKG had achieved market leadership in the GDR. In 1952, the SED leadership pushed for far-reaching reforms within the corporate organization. A revolutionary step was the introduction of the LKG advance notice service (VD). As a free supplement to the Börsenblatt, it showed every book published in the GDR or imported for free sale. Until 1989 the VD remained the most important bibliographic aid in the book trade in the GDR. Further innovations were the introduction of the collective bill and the principle of "parking and bundling". LKG now invoiced in its own name and bundled all of the delivering publishers. It also gave smaller bookstores the option of parking - i. H. delivery only on a certain day of the week - a.
The reforms of 1952 made the LKG one of the most modern German intermediate book retailers. The monopoly that the LKG achieved at that time, however, also meant the end of the private intermediate book trade in the GDR. Only two of the 26 private commission agents in Leipzig were able to hold their own until the turn of 1989.
In 1963 the LKG was nationalized. While the advantages that the party operations had enjoyed over others, especially in terms of technical equipment, no longer existed, the problems within the LKG increased. There was too little space, too small and too few transport vehicles, and there was also a lack of lifting and conveyor technology. The stocks increased and the publishers did not spoil their old stocks, which increased the shortage of space from year to year. In 1969 the LKG were offered residential barracks in an old mining facility in Pötzschau near Leipzig. The barracks, which were only partially suitable for storage, were demolished and replaced by nine lightweight buildings by 1972. Nevertheless, the storage capacities were not sufficient. In 1973, for the first time, 600 new titles had to be stored outdoors under tarpaulins - a practice that was repeated until 1989.
Privatization and a new start
In 1989 LKG employed 1,200 people and with sales of 1.2 billion marks (East) was Germany's top-selling publishing house. With the German reunification, the company lost its former monopoly position. Nevertheless, the company management decided to continue running the company in private hands. In order to ensure the continued existence of the core company, LKG temporarily shifted to other business areas. She ran a beverage wholesaler, founded a sign embossing service for license plates, opened a wholesale book market and several bookshops to sell old GDR stocks. On August 25, 1992, LKG was privatized through a management buy-out with an annual turnover of 20 million DM and 60 employees.
The new beginning was overshadowed by the scandal caused by the waste of stocks in 1990/91. The LKG's inventory comprised more than ten million books and brochures, mainly from the fields of education, social and legal sciences, but also works of fiction that had become unsaleable after reunification. LKG commissioned the former GDR recycling company VEB SERO to dispose of the waste. On June 17, 1990, it was announced that a large number of tipped books had been discovered in the Espenhain opencast mine. This act of book destruction was quickly associated with the LKG.
The destruction of the books met with severe public criticism. Although the LKG management took full responsibility, the damage to the company's image was enormous.
In 1995 LKG relocated its headquarters from Leipzig to Espenhain. In 1996 the company was in the black for the first time. LKG also caught up with its competitors in the old federal states in terms of technology and logistics. From 1999, step by step, all warehouses were equipped with new high shelves and high-performance stacking technology. In 2001 the LKG won the tender for the delivery of the Ravensburger Buchverlag. With the start of delivery on May 2, 2002, LKG had a second, independently operating delivery route and a new high-bay warehouse with 12,000 additional pallet spaces. In the same year, sales exceeded the 120 million euro mark for the first time.
New ways
In order to secure the future of the economically successful company, the previous LKG shareholders Ute Haft, Andreas Hengst and Jürgen Petry sold their company shares on January 1st, 2009 to the Stuttgart publishing house Koch, Neff & Oetinger (KNO-VA). This was a historic step, because in 1951 the LKG and the "nationally owned" house Koehler & Volkmar had been merged by the state. In addition, in 1990 Jürgen Voerster, the then head of the KNO-VA, refrained from taking over LKG and instead actively campaigned for the LKG to continue in the market economy.
On February 14, 2019, the management of KNO VA filed for insolvency at the Stuttgart District Court. LKG, which is not affected by the insolvency, was initially taken over by the Berliner Zeitfracht Group in August 2020 as part of the takeover of the KNV Group and sold on to the Frank and Kathrin Theil-Schulze family in December 2020. The Leipzig family is building on the 73-year history of the traditional LKG and continues to run it as a family business.
A new era begins for LKG without affiliation to a group, which will be associated with an increased focus on B2C business and the necessary investments in IT and warehouse technology in this context.
Areas of activity
In addition to the classic areas of activity as publishing delivery customer service including order acceptance, warehousing, invoicing, accounts receivable, delivery and returns processing - LKG has been offering its own online marketplace for its around 150 delivery customers since April 2020 with LKG24.de.
LKG has been supporting the Plant-for-the-Planet climate initiative since 2017.
Awards
On July 20, 2006, at Amazon's Vendor Day in Bad Hersfeld, LKG was awarded the "Golden Palette" among 103 book suppliers and eight wholesalers as the best publishing house for speed, reliability, innovation and flawless work.
literature
- Frank Thomas Grub: "Wende" and "Unity" as reflected in German-language literature: a manual. Volume 1: Investigations. De Gruyter, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-11-017775-6 , pp. 21-23.
- Kurt-Rudolf Böttger: The history of the LKG Leipzig commission and wholesale book trade 1946 - 1967 . LKG, Leipzig 1968.
- Marie-Kristin Rumland: Changes in the publishing industry and book trade in the former GDR 1989-1991. Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden 1993, ISBN 3-447-03419-X .
- Change as an opportunity. Sixty years of commission and wholesale book trading in Leipzig. LKG, Leipzig 2007.
- Jürgen Petry: The monopoly. Faber & Faber, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-932545-83-4 .
- Thomas Bez, Thomas Keiderling "The intermediate book trade"