Neckermann (mail order business)

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neckermann.de GmbH i. Ins.

logo
legal form GmbH
founding April 1, 1950
resolution 2012
Reason for dissolution insolvency
Seat Frankfurt am Main , Germany
management Michael Frege , insolvency administrator
Number of employees 1,466 (2010)
sales 1.29 billion euros (2010)
Branch Mail order
Website www.neckermann.de

Neckermann headquarters in Frankfurt am Main

Neckermann was one of the leading mail order companies in Europe. Josef Neckermann founded a textile company called Neckermann KG in 1948 - the year of the currency reform . The first catalog - still called the “price list” at the time - comprised twelve pages and 133 textile offers; the circulation was 100,000 pieces. On April 1, 1950, Neckermann founded Neckermann Versand KG in Frankfurt am Main . From 1995 the GmbH operated its own online shop under neckermann.de , through which almost 80 percent of sales were processed. The range consisted of over 700,000 items from the fashion, household, toys and technology segments.

As of October 8, 2010, neckermann.de was 100% owned by Sun Capital Partners .

On July 18, 2012, Neckermann.de GmbH and the subsidiary Neckermann Logistik GmbH filed for insolvency proceedings at the Frankfurt am Main district court . On September 26, 2012, announced that from October Neckermann handled is. This mainly applies to online trading, Neckermann Logistik GmbH and Neckermann.Contact Heideloh GmbH. The bankruptcy proceedings were officially opened on October 1, 2012. The Hamburg mail order company Otto secured the rights to the “Neckermann.de” brand in November 2012. Otto-Versand has been operating an online shop at "Neckermann.de" since February 4, 2013.

Company history

Josef Neckermann's career during the National Socialist era

Josef Neckermann , who came from a wealthy entrepreneurial family in Würzburg , joined his father's coal business in 1931 after completing a bank apprenticeship. In the course of the " Aryanization " of Jewish companies carried out by means of forced sales (at half the market value or more often less), with the leading participation of the NSDAP , the young entrepreneur acquired Siegmund Ruschkewitz's textile department store in Würzburg and the low-price Merkur store with a total of 130 employees and 60 sales representatives. Against the background of the Nuremberg Laws passed shortly before , Ruschkewitz signed the purchase contract on October 25, 1935, which stipulated a purchase price (100,000 marks, of which Neckermann transferred only 46,000 to a blocked mark account) well below value. Neckermann acquired a third department store with the Vetter department store , also located in Würzburg and already "Aryanised" by the previous owner.

The Josef Neckermann linen and clothing factory was founded in 1937 through the takeover of another company owned by Jews, the Karl Joel lingerie factory . The company, founded by Karl Amson Joel (the grandfather of the pianist and singer Billy Joel ) in Nuremberg in 1928 and with a mail order center in Berlin since 1934 , was the fourth largest textile mail order company in Germany at the time. The NSDAP member Neckermann, however, refused to pay the agreed purchase price of 2.3 million Reichsmarks for the takeover. For his part, Joel, persecuted by the Gestapo and the SS , had to flee via Switzerland to the USA and was only compensated with 2 million DM in 1957 after a lengthy reparation procedure. The “purchase” also included the rental contract for Karl Joel's Berlin villa, which Neckermann and his wife Annemarie moved into in 1938.

In the years that followed, Josef Neckermann tried to get government contracts in addition to the department stores and mail order business. Neckermann's first important contact was with Fritz Todt , which came about on the occasion of the planned west wall . From 1938 onwards Neckermann supplied blankets and work clothes for the 100,000 workers on the orders of the Todt Organization of the then “General Inspector for Construction”. In addition, Neckermann made use of his acquaintance with the textile manufacturer Hans Kehrl , who was the economic representative of the Führer and Reich Chancellor from 1934 onwards.

Together with Hertie boss Georg Karg , who, like Neckermann, founded his department store in the 1930s through "Aryanization", Josef Neckermann founded the Central Warehouse Association for Clothing (ZLG) at the end of 1941 . The company, founded as a company under public law, served as an interface between the “consumers” of government and military bodies and the textile manufacturers. The Ministry of Economics and the Wehrmacht reported their need for clothing to the ZLG, which then placed orders with the manufacturers. Neckermann owes the fact that the ZLG achieved a monopoly in this function, above all, to his acquaintance with Otto Ohlendorf , whom he met in 1939 during a factory tour and who was also a silent partner in the ZLG. It was also SS-Sturmbannführer Ohlendorf who was able to provide Neckermann with information on both raw material sources and transport options. The ZLG had to supply all textile manufacturers with orders on an equal footing, but Neckermann was in control of the competition and gave his companies attractive orders.

After Fritz Todt had an accident in a plane crash in early 1942, Albert Speer was appointed as the new Reich Minister for Armaments and Ammunition . Neckermann contacted him immediately and received the order from him to design winter uniforms for the Wehrmacht. Speer had the idea that Neckermann should present his collection to Hitler himself on his 53rd birthday in the Fuehrer's headquarters in Wolfsschanze . The uniforms were convincing, and Neckermann received the order to produce 2.5 million pieces in the summer that were needed for the winter on the Eastern Front. Neckermann rose under Speer to head the Reich Office for Clothing .

Post-war years 1945 to 1948 in Munich

The villa in Berlin's Tannenbergallee that Joel had taken over was destroyed in a bomb attack in December 1943, and the family then moved to Rottach am Tegernsee with Annemarie Neckermann's father. Josef Neckermann himself lived in the Berlin Hotel Adlon in 1944 and in the last months of the war in 1945 and only fled to his family at the Tegernsee at the end of April, a few days before the end of the war. In June 1945 he turned to Karl Arthur Lange in Munich , head of the Löwenbräu brewery since 1941 and appointed by the American occupation forces as the new Bavarian Minister of Economics, with the concern of finding the remaining clothing stocks of the ZLG in Bavaria. For a long time, Neckermann was the "head of the Bavarian State Office for Textile Industry" and provided him with an official apartment in Lochham .

After the war, the companies taken over by "Aryanization" in the Third Reich were placed in the trusteeship of the Allied Control Council in accordance with Military Law No. 52 of August 1945 , and the new owners were prohibited from resuming business activities and from accessing their property. Despite the ban, Neckermann tried, in addition to his work for the Ministry of Economic Affairs, to resume business in Würzburg. His operations there had been bombed in the air raids on March 16, except for the Vetter fashion house . He also tried to bring two operations of the former ZLG under his control. For this he was sentenced by a military court in December 1945 to one year in a labor camp for violating the Control Council Act. Neckermann , who suffered from tuberculosis in the summer of 1946, spent around half of his imprisonment in a hospital. The recovery time was counted towards the sentence, Neckermann was healthy again at the end of 1946 and a free man. At the beginning of 1947, a health setback tied him to bed again for a few months.

The denazification process of Josef Neckermann also took place in Munich , it ended on May 3, 1948. Neckermann owed it primarily to his lawyer Rudolf Zorn that he was classified in category III of the “fellow travelers” of the Nazi regime and with a fine of 2,000 marks got away. His behavior towards the Jewish “business partners” was always presented as correct.

Foundation and rise in the 1950s and 1960s

The former company headquarters on Danziger Platz (1953-60)

Company foundation in Frankfurt

A family tragedy prompted the move from Munich to Oberursel near Frankfurt am Main in May 1948 : Josef Neckermann's sister Maria-Barbara and her husband died in a car accident in mid-January. The married couple Josef and Annemarie Neckermann adopted their three daughters and moved into the family house in Oberursel. In the same year, on June 20, the DM was introduced as the new currency and the rationing law was repealed by Ludwig Erhard , who later served as the “Director of the Administration for the Economy of the United Economic Area” .

The textile company Neckermann KG was founded on September 6, 1948 ; the company's headquarters were on Mainzer Landstrasse in Frankfurt. Josef Neckermann himself did not officially take action immediately, the Control Council Act was still in force and was not repealed until November 10th. The entry in the commercial register was in the name of his wife Annemarie, and he appointed Theodor Betzen, whom he knew from his work for the “Reichsgruppe Handel” , as managing director . With two office floors and a textile wholesaler, Neckermann prepared his return to the mail order business here, sources of supply and logistics had to be set up and addresses for catalog dispatch had to be obtained.

On April 1, 1950, the company was transferred to Neckermann Versand KG , whose sole general partner was Josef Neckermann. The company started with 107 employees and only a small initial capital of 450,000 DM. This sum was released by the Allies from the assets of its Würzburg businesses. By taking on a limited partner , the capital was increased to a nominal DM 21.5 million and strengthened by long-term loans from shareholders and banks.

Neckermann also received offers from other cities for the company headquarters, but ultimately decided in favor of Frankfurt - not least because of the first-class transport connections and its convenient location for shipping throughout Germany. The city also accommodated Neckermann under Mayor Walter Kolb by leasing suitable company premises: it guaranteed the company a lease of one mark per square meter for 99 years for the 6,500 m² site on Danziger Platz in the vicinity of Frankfurt's Ostbahnhof , and also took over one Deficiency guarantee of 1.2 million marks for the new building. The new department store and mail order store was opened on June 11, 1951, and the Josef Neckermanns family moved into the two upper floors of the house. In the same year Neckermann opened further sales outlets in Trier, Kassel, Hanau, Rosenheim and in Würzburg (in the former Ruschkewitz department store).

Since 1948 Neckermann had built up a file with 100,000 addresses and organized the logistics for shipping; In addition to the new company building located directly at the Ostbahnhof, he had already rented a 1,000 m² office and warehouse building in Kelsterbach in 1950 . The first Neckermann catalog , which was still a twelve-page booklet with the title “Preisliste 119”, in which 133 inexpensive textile articles were offered, appeared in March 1950 with an edition of 100,000. Neckermann gave the first catalog the number 119 in order to simulate a long mail-order tradition; After all, there was fierce competition in those years, with around 4,000 mail order companies romping around on the market. Sales of DM 10 million were achieved in the first year.

Neckermann economic miracle

The pent-up demand for consumer goods in the 1950s was immense, Neckermann met with high demand due to the low prices and soon had a large number of regular customers. One of his most important clientele in these years were the displaced people in the "flat country", who felt particularly addressed both by the mailing of his catalogs and by the low prices.

Moped Necko , built in 1957, manufacturer: Geier Werke
Small motorcycle Garelli Cross built in 1968

In 1953, the range was expanded to include small pieces of furniture, leather goods, lamps and a radio, which was unrivaled at a price of DM 187. In the following year, Neckermann also offered refrigerators and televisions (one of which was a third cheaper than the competition at 648 marks) and, from 1955, also bicycles and washing machines, and in the course of the first five years the catalog was already from twelve to 200 pages grown. From 1956 to even mopeds were under the brand name Necko (named after Josef Neckermann's nickname) and from the GDR originating Simson Spatz offered from 1968 were driven under the brand name Neckermann MZ also East German two-stroke motorcycles in the Motorcycle Zschopau . The in-house Neckermann-MZ racing team successfully took part in motorcycle world championship races from 1968 to 1969. Neckermann driver Dieter Braun won the German motorcycle road championship in the 125 cc class on MZ in 1968 and 1969 . At the same time, Garelli mopeds, mopeds and mopeds were offered at dumping prices in order to penetrate the German moped and moped market, which was firmly in the hands of Kreidler , Hercules and Zündapp .

The scope of the catalog, which was sent out twice a year in a spring / summer and an autumn / winter edition, grew within a few years to over 300 pages and its circulation to 3 million items, the turnover of Neckermann Versand KG was already in In 1954 an impressive 300 million DM. Neckermann became one of the figureheads of the German economic miracle , his range of consumer goods affordable “for everyone” corresponded to the motto “ prosperity for all ” issued by Economics Minister Ludwig Erhard .

The electronics retail sector in particular suffered from the aggressive pricing policy of the mail order business and recorded a slump in sales. For example, if a Constructa washing machine cost 1,600 marks in a specialist shop, you could order the same model from Neckermann for 950 DM. The fact that the AEG logo on the Neckermann product was replaced by a logo with an "N" decorated with asterisks didn't bother the customers. Neckermann dictated the prices, the weekly newspaper Die Zeit wrote on March 8, 1956:

“The Frankfurt mail order company Neckermann KG recently sent out its catalog with a circulation of 2½ million. The active company presents its range of consumer goods from handkerchiefs to mopeds on 200 pages. [...] It represents a yardstick with which every consumer can judge the pricing of the entire retail trade in comparable goods. As long as the Neckermann catalog is valid, the competition with their prices cannot deviate too far from this offer. "

- The time

In a circular in February 1954, the guild called on all electrical retailers to refuse the installation and repair of Neckermann devices. That was an own goal, as it turned out: Neckermann went to court against this letter, and the electrical guild condemned it to revoke it. In addition, he now set up his own technical customer service, for which a comprehensive service network with up to 200 acceptance points and 250 mobile service employees was set up. This investment paid off, and sales of electrical appliances continued to rise as a result.

In addition, there were department stores in 19 cities called “sales outlets”. The chain's flagship was a large-scale new building on Frankfurter Zeil , which opened in 1956.

The competitors

In the mid-1930s, four companies were leaders in the textile mail order industry in the German Reich:

After the Second World War, Werner Otto, originally from Berlin, founded a shoe factory in Hamburg. After this failed, he tried his hand at mail order shoes in August 1949 and distributed 300 copies of a 14-page binder to households. From these humble beginnings, Otto-Versand grew into the second largest universal mail order company in Germany over the next two decades. However, Otto initially limited himself primarily to the north of the Federal Republic.

Competitors from the pre-war period also resumed competition during this period. Schöpflin started a large mail order company in Brombach in 1948, as did Witt in Weiden. However, both companies limited themselves to the textile and fashion sector and initially to regional markets and therefore did not grow to the same extent as the three industry giants in the following years, Quelle, Otto and Neckermann. With the exception of Quelle, which was liquidated in 2009 due to the insolvency of the parent company Arcandor AG ( KarstadtQuelle AG until 2007 ), these have been preserved to this day.

The market leaders Neckermann Versand and Quelle Schickedanz dominated the mail order business in the 1950s. They also fought each other in court, for example, in June 1955 at the Stuttgart Regional Court , Quelle obtained an injunction that five items (a pajamas, a mural, a pair of sneakers and ladies' sandals and a carpet) from the Neckermann catalog were not more could be sold because they did not correspond to the quality described in the catalog. In addition, a passage in the catalog in which a quality guarantee was given had to be deleted. This trial, the verdict of which had to be printed in several national newspapers, was only the beginning of a subsequent series of legal proceedings.

It is an irony of fate that the companies built up by the two “arch enemies” in the post-war period finally jointly made a third party, the Karstadt department store group, the largest mail-order company in Europe - albeit years after the patriarch's death: Gustav Schickedanz died in 1977, Josef Neckermann 1992.

Relocation to Hanauer Landstrasse

Later the main entrance to the Neckermann headquarters. The shafts and stairs on the facade are striking.

The company continued to expand, and with it the number of employees. Neckermann had started with 107 employees in 1950, but by the end of 1951 the number had risen to 1,700. In 1958 the company as a whole employed over 6,000 people, the majority of them in Frankfurt. At peak times like the pre-Christmas business, a considerable number of temporary workers was also needed.

The Neckermann headquarters building complex on Danziger Platz had become too small, so the decision was made to build a new building at Hanauer Landstrasse 360 in the Fechenheim district of Frankfurt . The 256-meter-long and 56-meter-wide six-story building designed by the architect Egon Eiermann was planned and built between 1958 and 1961. A noticeable feature of the sober functional building was and is the four external staircases (two each on both long sides), which saved space for stairwells. The company moved into its new headquarters on September 15, 1960 and is still the company's headquarters today. An IBM large computer system was installed to optimize order processing . The order data was first transferred to punch cards in the so-called “punch room” using typewriter-like devices and then onto magnetic tapes, and the mainframe computer then took over the writing of the invoices and the necessary preparatory work. The building is now considered an architectural icon of the 1960s, but was partially closed by an extension on Hanauer Landstrasse.

In 1965, 3,811 people worked in the Frankfurt dispatch center, and a further 14,297 people were employed in the textile factories in Frankfurt, Darmstadt and Essen. Overall, the Neckermann Group generated more than DM 1 billion for the first time this year.

"Neckermann makes it possible"

Against the company slogan "Better off with Neckermann" , the competition obtained several injunctions due to comparative advertising ; At the beginning of 1960, 900,000 catalogs that had already been printed had to be crushed again, and the slogan was finally banned by court order on the grounds that Neckermann “spurned the competitors”.

In mid-1961 the new advertising slogan “Neckermann makes it possible” was born, but this was not a creation by McCann or one of the other advertising agencies dedicated to it . A participant in a working session, in which a catchy formulation had been pondered in vain for hours, the stomach growled, and when asked if it was not possible to get something to eat at Neckermann, a young employee jumped up. A short time later returned with a tray of hot sausages and served them with the words: “Here! Neckermann makes it possible! ".

Prefabricated houses, insurance and long-distance travel

From the beginning of the 1960s, Josef Neckermann expanded the range of products to include the pure consumer goods business. In order to obtain the capital necessary for the investments, and despite the increasing sales volume of high liabilities, he went public with his company and at the beginning of 1963 converted Neckermann Versand KG into a partnership limited by shares (KGaA). The shares officially issued on February 15 were oversubscribed by 200% and when they were officially listed on the stock exchange, they were already 300% of the issue value. 1963 was also the year in which Neckermann's son Peter, who had previously studied business administration and had joined the company the year before, rose to the management.

Neckermann Eigenheim GmbH was founded in 1963 and offered inexpensive turnkey prefabricated houses . 25,000 houses were built in ten years. The 20 m² holiday home “Hobby” for the garden was listed in the catalog as the cheapest offer for 4,750 marks. Also in 1963, Neckura -versicherungs-AG was established in cooperation with Nationwide Insurance Co. , the third largest insurance company in the USA .

In the main catalog of 1963, inexpensive air travel was also offered for the first time, which was initially organized in cooperation with Hotelplan, a Swiss holiday company with travel agencies also in Germany. The first travel brochure was a six-page leaflet offering 15-day air travel to Spain ( Mallorca and Costa del Sol ), Tunisia , the Romanian Black Sea coast and Yugoslavia (southern Dalmatia and Montenegro). The flights were mainly carried out by Condor Flugdienst GmbH using Vickers Viscount 814 aircraft .

18,000 bookings were received straight away, and 35,000 guests were welcomed in the second financial year. To expand the travel business, the company became independent under the name Neckermann und Reisen GmbH & Co. KG (NUR) . NUR bought - also in the off-season - large capacities of charter flight seats and hotel beds, was able to achieve price advantages and offer extremely cheap package tours. In addition to selling the trips via the catalog, a total of 70 sales outlets for NUR-Reisen were set up in the Neckermann department stores from 1965 onwards.

The offer was gradually expanded, in addition to long-distance trips to Thailand and East Africa , the "Neckermännern", as NUR customers were called, were also offered trips to the USSR . At the end of the 1960s the company was the leading provider of air travel in Germany, and in 1970 the NUR's millionth passenger was welcomed to Frankfurt Airport . At the beginning of the 1970s, new concepts such as “active vacation” (NUR ski school, NUR sailing school) and “club vacation” (first offered in 1972 under the name “Aldiana” in Senegal ) were developed.

Takeover by Karstadt

Causes of the economic decline

The two major competitors in the mail order business, Quelle and Otto , had already achieved higher sales than Neckermann in 1958 and 1966, respectively, while cheap discounters and pick-up wholesale markets such as Metro AG (called "Cash & Carry" there) made the company's mail order and department store division additional competition since the 1960s.

Although the Neckermann Group's sales had grown over two decades, the company was in the red as a result of its own merciless pricing policy. Josef Neckermann's maxim "Big turnover, small profit" did not work out in the long run, the financial cover was thin from the beginning due to the low return , so that liabilities in the three-digit million amount had piled up, which by May 1963 to 131 million DM had grown, so that the banks threatened to stop financing. Neckermann was able to hold his company for a few years , among other things through supplier credits and the IPO in 1963 as well as the fact that the sales volume increased annually in the 1960s, but in the mid-1970s they were on the verge of bankruptcy .

The aftermath of the 1973 oil crisis troubled the company: The demand for consumer goods fell drastically, and numerous well-known companies had to file for bankruptcy during this period. The immediate reason why Josef Neckermann had to sell his life's work, however, was a consequence of wrong entrepreneurial decisions.

An attempt to save the company by increasing prices in the autumn / winter of 1974/75 failed, customers switched to competitors, so that the price increases had to be reversed. For the company's 25th anniversary in 1975, the prices of all items in the spring / summer catalog were reduced by 10%. However, the rush that followed for the items, which were already very tightly calculated in terms of price, had the economic impact: the motto “the quantity makes it” had a negative impact on the company's results due to the price reduction. Although sales in 1975 grew from 2.9 billion to 3.5 billion DM, the anniversary campaign brought the mail-order company a loss of around 4 million DM.

The "fusion" of Neckermann with Karstadt

Josef Neckermann had no choice but to sell shares in his company that was no longer viable on its own. From spring 1976 he negotiated a possible merger with Karstadt boss Walter Deuss , at a press conference for the general meeting on July 7th of that year he announced that Karstadt would join Neckermann as a new major shareholder.

As a result, the planned merger still had to be approved by the cartel office , the approval was granted on November 19. The company was saved, but the business year 1976 was again bad for Neckermann: the total turnover of the group showed a minus of 7.7 million DM. The Commerzbank , bank Neckermann family, forced this the end of 1976, to separate from their company-owned, because at that time Josef Neckermann's sons as the sole shareholders adhered to the company what the Neckermanns much of their private wealth, 29 of 34 million DM, cost .

The last shareholders' meeting of Neckermann Versand KGaA took place on June 1, 1977, after which it was converted into a pure stock corporation (share capital: 137.4 million DM), and Karstadt AG became the new main owner by taking over 51.2% of the shares . The company's founder, Josef Neckermann, initially moved to a post on the supervisory board of the new company for a year and then retired. He received an annual company pension of DM 150,000 and then devoted himself exclusively to his "second life's work", Deutsche Sporthilfe . His son Peter also left the company, Johannes Neckermann was the last to leave in August 1978. Both sons emigrated to the USA in 1980 and 1981 in order to create a new existence there.

The era of the Neckermann family was over.

Mass layoffs and restructuring

The "new" company started with a loss of almost one billion and a turnover of 3.5 billion marks in 1978. Thousands of the last 18,000 employees were laid off this year; Start of a “restructuring course” for the Neckermann Group, which also included the downsizing of customer service, which was later completely discontinued.

Karstadt continued to run 16 of the 34 Neckermann department stores under its own name, while the remaining, mostly smaller branches were partly continued as sales outlets, partly sold or closed. The two former Frankfurt department stores at Konstablerwache and in the Nord-West-Zentrum were moved into in 1988 by the clothing store Peek & Cloppenburg .

The new owner gradually reduced the company to the mail order business, and the travel, real estate and insurance branch subsidiaries founded in the 1960s were sold:

  • The tour operator NUR went completely to Karstadt AG in 1981 and then merged into the new umbrella brand NUR Touristic . In 1997 this was combined with the travel division of the Lufthansa Group ( Condor Flugdienst ) to form today's Thomas Cook AG . Although trips are still sold under the brand name Neckermann Reisen and distributed via the Neckermann-Versand website, among other things, the tour operator is TC Touristik GmbH in Oberursel, in which Thomas Cook holds 90% and KarstadtQuelle 10%.
  • The Neckermann home GmbH was the 1982 Hochtief AG sold.
  • The insurer Neckura first went to the co-founders, the Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company , and finally in 2001 in the Zurich Group and no longer exists today, neither as a company nor as a private label.

The Neckermann Versand AG , owned at the 1984 Karstadt over 95% of the shares, wrote in 1987 with a net income of 5.4 million marks in the black again.

Neckermann in the Arcandor Group

In 1999, Karstadt finally merged with Quelle, Neckermann's greatest competitor, to form KarstadtQuelle AG , which was later renamed Arcandor AG . This made Neckermann Versand AG, alongside Quelle AG, one of the two large universal mail order companies and a 100 percent subsidiary of the Arcandor Group. Together they had 22,278 employees (2003: 22,966, 2002: 22,989) - including subsidiaries in Germany and abroad -, sent 1,081 catalogs with a total circulation of around 1.5 billion copies, and achieved sales of 5.92 billion euros which corresponds to a market share of 30%. Including special mail order, the mail order division generated 52.5% of the Arcandor Group's total sales .

Since 2002 the stock corporations Quelle and Neckermann had a joint chairman of the board. From January 1, 2002, this was Christoph Achenbach , replacing Werner Piotrowski at the head of Neckermann. After Achenbach became CEO of the Arcandor Group in 2004 , Arwed Fischer took over the management of Quelle and Neckermann on April 1, 2004, but was replaced by Harald Pinger after Achenbach left the Group in April 2005 .

The group management has repeatedly emphasized that both companies will remain as independent brands in the mail order business. On the other hand, the Group's sales in the mail order division slumped by 9.5% in 2004, and the decline in sales continued in the following year. As a consequence, the Arcandor management announced in November 2005 that 337 jobs would be cut at Neckermann-Versand in Germany by the end of 2007.

In addition to other joint stock companies in the group, Neckermann and Quelle in Germany were each converted into a GmbH on January 1, 2006 , and Neckermann Versand AG has been trading as neckermann.de GmbH in Germany since then . At the same time, Marc Oliver Sommer became the new director of the mail order division of Arcandor AG. In addition, Bernhard Oppenrieder and Harald Gutschi were appointed managing directors at neckermann.de GmbH. The latter resigned on March 1, 2007 and was replaced by Torsten Waack.

Separation from Arcandor

On November 28, 2006 it was announced that Arcandor is separating from neckermann.de in order to concentrate on its own core business. This was completed at the end of 2007 when Arcandor “sold” 51 percent of the shares in neckermann.de to Sun Capital without a purchase price. From 2008, the new management spokesman was Martin Lenz.

At the end of June 2008 Neckermann announced that there would no longer be a catalog in Switzerland, but that neckermann.ch would act purely as an internet mail order company. It was a two-year test to verify the company's Internet strategy.

On December 1, 2008 it was announced that the Neckermann management had asked the Supervisory Board to be released from all tasks. This request was accepted, so that Martin Lenz, Chairman of the Management Board, Torsten Waack, Head of Marketing at Neckermann and Bernhard Dopf, responsible for IT and finance, only stayed in office until successors were found for their positions. The background to the resignation is a failed management buy-out .

From April 1, 2009, Henning Koopmann was Chairman of the Management Board. Other members of the management were Helmut Steurer, Henning Bosch and Franz Wurzberger (CPO).

Unlike Quelle, Neckermann was not directly affected by the bankruptcy of Arcandor AG in June 2009. The 49 percent share in Neckermann, which Arcandor still held, was taken over in October 2010 by Sun Capital Partners , which now holds 100 percent in Neckermann.

The company was - after OTTO - the second largest universal mail order company in Germany and the fourth largest in Europe. In 2010, the company employed around 2,400 people in Germany and generated 871 million euros here. In 2011 the online shop recorded an average of 14 million visits a month. Around 33,500 shipments left the Frankfurt headquarters every day. In the last few years, the company generated almost 80 percent of its sales over the Internet and nearly 90 percent of new customers were online customers.

Neckermann in Austria

In 1994 Neckermann took over the mail order business of Kastner & Öhler in Graz, Austria, which had been working with Neckermann for a long time, but has now withdrawn from mail order. In 1997 Neckermann was able to publish the first Austrian catalog. At the same time, Neckermann also entered online trading. In 2010, the GesmbH, which operates independently of Germany and has 330 employees, had a turnover of 114 million euros and, according to its own statements, was third in the Austrian mail order business.

Reorganization Efforts and Bankruptcy

On April 27, 2012, the company announced plans for an organizational restructuring, an adjustment of the product range, the realignment as a pure online retailer and the reduction of 1,380 jobs. On July 18, 2012 Neckermann.de filed for insolvency at the Frankfurt am Main district court . The Frankfurt am Main District Court appointed Michael Frege and Joachim Kühne as provisional insolvency administrators .

The online trade Neckermann.de should have found an investor by the end of September 2012, but this did not happen. The reason for the hopeless search was the many shortcomings and high financial risks that deterred potential investors.

On September 26, 2012 it was announced that the search for an investor carried out in the context of the bankruptcy had been unsuccessful and therefore only the liquidation of the company remained. According to the management, the financial situation has deteriorated further, so that operations can no longer be maintained. Most of the employees were laid off on October 1, 2012.

The insolvency administrators announced on November 22, 2012 that the former competitor Otto-Versand had acquired the rights to the “Neckermann.de” brand in Germany and its own brands, as well as the rights to the internet presence. In addition, Otto will also have access to the address data of Neckermann customers in order to be able to advertise. Otto is said to have paid a total of 4.35 million euros for this. Otto-Versand has been operating an online shop at neckermann.de since February 4, 2013.

A lawsuit by the insolvency administrator against the former management for damages in the amount of 19.8 million euros due to late filing of bankruptcy was rejected by the Frankfurt am Main regional court .

Neckermann Austria applied for a restructuring procedure without self-administration in Graz on July 26, 2012. As a precaution, the 300 employees were registered with the AMS for resignation. Due to the dependency on the parent company in Germany, there was insolvency, although there was no over-indebtedness. On December 21, 2012, contracts for the takeover of Neckermann Austria by TopAgers AG were signed.

Future of the Neckermann site

The future of 13 of the 24 hectares of the Neckermann site is still unclear. It is made more difficult by the fact that apartments are not allowed to be built on the site due to the Seveso II Directive .

The site was acquired by a Turkish investor shortly after the bankruptcy. According to the original plans, a large trading center was to be built here, but in 2014 just a third of the space was rented, the rest was empty. At the height of the refugee crisis, the state of Hesse rented large parts of the Neckermann area to accommodate up to 6,000 refugees, who have all moved out since 2016. There is still no development concept for the area. In 2019, the crime scene: The good and the bad was filmed in the building . In February 2020, Interxion acquired 11 of the 24 hectares of the Neckermann site and plans to build a data center there for an investment volume of 1 billion euros and also to use the traditional, listed building for this purpose.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ At Neckermann the lights go out for good. Die Welt , September 28, 2012, accessed November 22, 2012 .
  2. ↑ a b Annual Report 2010 in the electronic Federal Gazette
  3. ↑ http://www.neckermann.info/media/PM_n.de_Neckermann_steller_Insolvenzfrage_180712.pdf
  4. ↑ Shipping icon Neckermann is broke - Handelsblatt online from July 18, 2012
  5. ↑ Neckermann.de files for bankruptcy - heise online from July 18, 2012
  6. ↑ Neckermann is being wound up. In: Heise online . September 26, 2012, accessed September 26, 2012 .
  7. ↑ derstandard.at: Neckermann insolvency proceedings opened on October 1, 2012,
  8. ↑ a b Otto secures Neckermann naming rights. Spiegel Online , November 22, 2012, accessed November 22, 2012 .
  9. ^ Roland Flade: The Würzburg Jews from 1919 to the present. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001–2007, Volume III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 529-545 and 1308, here: p. 535.
  10. ^ Roland Flade: Ruschkewitz - a family from Würzburg. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. Volume 3 (2007), pp. 546-548.
  11. ^ Sybille Grübel: Timeline of the history of the city from 1814-2006. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Volume 2, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 1225-1247; here: p. 1239.
  12. ↑ "Price list 119"
  13. ↑ Hans Magnus Enzensberger : The plebiscite of the consumer. In: Hans Magnus Enzensberger: Details I. Consciousness Industry. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp 1962, pp. 167-178. (Essay on the first Neckermann catalogs.)
  14. ^ Neckermann with a moped. In: Politics. Die Zeit, March 8, 1956, accessed June 5, 2012 .
  15. ^ Wilhelm Opatz and Friends of Frankfurt eV (eds.): Frankfurt 1960-1969 Niggli Verlag Zurich, 2016
  16. ^ Veszelitis: Die Neckermanns , p. 301ff.
  17. ^ Separation from Neckermann
  18. ↑ Stefan Weber: Arcandor is giving away Neckermann shares .Süddeutsche from May 17, 2010, also online at sueddeutsche.de , accessed on June 29, 2019.
  19. ↑ Press release from June 25, 2008
  20. ^ At Neckermann, the entire tour resigns , article in the Handelsblatt dated December 2, 2008, accessed on December 3, 2008
  21. ↑ http://www.neckermann.info/3966.html
  22. ^ Frankfurter Rundschau online: Neckermann unter der Sonne , October 8, 2010, accessed on October 28, 2010
  23. ↑ Neckermann.at - background information ( memento of August 6, 2012 in the Internet Archive ), accessed on July 19, 2012
  24. ↑ neckermann.de accelerates e-commerce alignment (PDF). Press release of April 27, 2012.
  25. ^ Application for bankruptcy: Mail order company Neckermann is bankrupt. Reported by Spiegel Online on July 18, 2012.
  26. ↑ Mail order dealer: Campinos brother becomes Neckermann's insolvency administrator. Report to FAZ-online from July 19, 2012.
  27. ↑ Neckermann bankruptcy: Neckermann threatens to end at the end of September ( memento from September 16, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) in finanzen.de, September 13, 2012
  28. ↑ Tagesschau: Neckermann will be wound up on September 26, 2012
  29. ^ WirtschaftsWoche Online: Details from bankruptcy files - Why Neckermann could not be saved from September 13, 2013
  30. ↑ Trial before the Frankfurt Regional Court: Neckermann insolvency administrator flashes with millions claim - Hessenschau.de
  31. ↑ Neckermann files for bankruptcy on ORF on July 26, 2012, accessed on July 26, 2012.
  32. ↑ Salzburger Nachrichten of December 21, 2012, accessed on June 29, 2019.
  33. ↑ One and a half years after bankruptcy: The enigmatic investor from the Neckermann site - FAZ.net
  34. ↑ Volker Siefert: But not an international trading center ?: Investor wants to sell the Neckermann area in Frankfurt again ( Memento from August 21, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) from August 18, 2018. From hessenschau.de , accessed on June 29, 2019.
  35. ↑ Thomas Gehringer: Tatort - The good and the bad. tittelbach.tv, accessed on April 22, 2020 .
  36. ↑ Neckermann site sold: Campus for data centers FAZ.net , February 17, 2020
  37. ↑ Interexion: In traditional construction: Billions invested in the world's largest Internet node , FAZ.net, July 30, 2020

Coordinates: 50 ° 7 ′ 31.4 "  N , 8 ° 45 ′ 5.8"  E