Worldview (company)

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Weltbild GmbH & Co. KG

logo
legal form GmbH & Co. KG
founding 2001
Seat Augsburg , Germany
management Christian Sailer (Chairman), Bjoern Minnier, Markus Pawlikowski
Number of employees 1,300 (December 2015)
sales 610 million euros (2016/2017)
Branch Book trade, publishing, mail order
Website www.weltbild.com

Worldview (formerly Weltbild Publishing Group ) is a German publishing house -, mail order and book trade company based in Augsburg . The owner of the Weltbild Group is the consulting and investment company Droege International Group AG, based in Düsseldorf.

The Weltbild brand emerged from the Catholic magazine publisher Winfried-Werk GmbH founded by Josef Hall in 1948 . The declining response to Catholic edification pamphlets led to a complete reorientation in 1987 and to Weltbild Verlag GmbH . In 2001 the publishing group Weltbild was created. It belonged to 100% of the Roman Catholic Church in Germany and was one of the market leaders in the chain and online book trade in Germany.

Weltbild is a large multi-channel bookseller and serves customers via online shops, direct marketing, its own branches and social networks.

Weltbild, with the Thalia Group and the Mayersche bookstore chains, was one of the driving forces behind chain stores in the book trade thanks to strong expansion with the acquisition of owner-managed bookstores and the establishment of new bookstores.

On July 1, 2014 the financial company Droege International Group took over 60% of the shares, 40% is held by the insolvency administrator on behalf of the creditors. In the course of this, the business operations of the old publishing group Weltbild GmbH were transferred to Weltbild Retail GmbH & Co. KG., Later Weltbild GmbH & Co. KG, founded on August 7, 2014.

publishing company

Historical logo of the publishing group Weltbild GmbH

Weltbild operates its own publishing house in Augsburg and from 1999 to summer 2013 held a 50% stake in the Droemer Knaur publishing group . For a long time there was an additional publisher within the Weltbild group. That was Bechtermünz Verlag in Weltbild Verlag. The Bechtermünz Verlag was originally located in Eltville am Rhein , later in Augsburg.

Weltbild-Verlag was founded in 1948 as Winfried-Werk GmbH and published the Catholic magazine Mann in der Zeit , which was renamed Weltbild in 1968 . The rise to one of the largest booksellers in Europe with hundreds of branches and mail order business is attributed to Carel Halff , who has been with the company since 1975 and was CEO from 2001.

Since 2001 Weltbild had a joint venture with OZ-Verlag in the area of ​​magazines (Living & More GmbH, Offenburg). There were also 50/50 joint ventures with the Belgian media company Belgomedia (Bayard Presse, France, and Roularta Media, Belgium). Weltbild publishes magazines in the areas of parents and families, 40-plus / 50-plus, as well as house and garden. In the 2007/2008 financial year, Weltbild sold the entire magazine division to the French Bayard Group.

Media distribution and book trade

Online shop logo

Weltbild is active in the book market with its own branches, an online shop, direct marketing and social media. The online shop is one of the largest in Germany. In addition to books and e-books, Weltbild also sells CDs, DVDs, beautiful things for the home, electronics, gifts and household items. Toys are mainly sold through the Kidoh brand (catalog mail order and internet).

Weltbild operates 126 branches in Germany, Austria and Switzerland (as of November 2018). In the past, around 330 branches were bundled in Weltbild Plus Medienvertriebs GmbH & Co. KG .

The Weltbild branch network comprised different shop fitting and range concepts:

  • Weltbild "plus" opened its first plus branches in 1994 in Fürth, Landsberg and Weilheim. The focus of the range is on bestsellers and low-priced special editions, beautiful items for the home, gift items, electronics and household items.
  • Jokers is established in the field of modern antiquarian books. Jokers sells books via catalog, via 24 Jokers branches and via an internet shop.
  • Worldview! is a full-range bookstore. At around 300–450 square meters, the “Ausrufzeichen” bookstores are larger than Weltbild plus and, similar to the chain store Thalia , offer a full range of books. At its peak there were 12 Weltbild! Branches in Germany, including in Baden-Baden, Berlin-Steglitz and Gießen, and three branches in Switzerland (including in Kriens). In Austria, the three Weltbild! Bookstores operated on the basis of a cooperation with the Salzburg company Andreas & Dr. Müller at times under the name “A&M!”.
  • Weltbild "best" was represented in various self-service hypermarkets.
  • In 2005 Weltbild acquired the now closed Wohlthat'sche Buchhandlung , which was particularly represented in Berlin, with around 36 branches in Germany with a focus on inexpensive special editions and remaining stock.

From January 2008, the company management standardized the appearance of all 330 branches with the brands Weltbild plus , Buchhandlung Weltbild !, A&M plus and A&M! under a red logo with the name "Weltbild". In 2009, 322 sales employees in the Weltbild Plus branches were dismissed for operational reasons, as “sales would have shifted to the Internet”. As a result, there were strikes at the headquarters in Augsburg.

From 2006 to 2014, Weltbild's stationary book trade was in the hands of the financial holding company DBH Deutsche Buch Handels GmbH & Co. KG . DBH belonged 50% to the Weltbild publishing group and 50% to the Hugendubel family and has been the German market leader in the book trade with a total of around 465 branches (as of September 2007). The company has been operating the book departments of the Karstadt department stores in the “shop-in-shop” model via its subsidiary DBH Warenhaus since July 1, 2008 . In larger houses, the space traded under the name Hugendubel ( KaDeWe Berlin and in the Karstadthaus on Berlin's Hermannplatz ). In smaller houses, the bookstore operated under the name Weltbild. The number of bookshops in the Karstadt department stores has been reduced from 52 to 26 branches. They went over to Hugendubel.

In the online book trade, Weltbild has a 100% interest in buecher.de and 49% in cBooks Germany GmbH ( Booklooker ). A 50 percent stake in the Dutch company Bol.com was sold in April 2009, and the joint ventures in Russia (Moy Mir) and Poland (Klub dla Ciebie) were given up.

history

Until 2014, shareholders of the company were twelve Catholic German dioceses , namely the (arch) dioceses of Augsburg, Aachen, Bamberg, Eichstätt, Fulda, Freiburg, Munich / Freising, Münster, Passau, Regensburg, Trier and Würzburg, the Association of Dioceses of Germany ( VDD) and the cath. Military Bishop's Office Berlin . The VDD (24.2%), the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising (13.2%) and the Diocese of Augsburg (11.7%) held larger stakes .

Controversy

A 70-page documentation of the Catholic Initiative Catholic! In 2008 Weltbild criticized the alleged offer of “sex books, violence glorifying, esoteric , magical and satanic writings”. The German bishops as responsible owners were written to; however, the response was low.

In October 2011, the magazine buchreport reported that the Catholic publishing group also publishes erotica , but on the other hand, the Hugendubel online shop , which adopted the Weltbild at the beginning of the year, suddenly lacks literature critical of the church . The trade journal concluded that the sender was “significantly more open-minded” towards erotic literature. Alexander Kissler demanded in Focus the "complete exit" of the church from Weltbild and Droemer Knaur as well as the "sale of all shares [...], even if with losses". This price must “be able to afford a church for which de-worldization for the sake of the world is not just a pious phrase.” The publisher stated that sales of erotic literature were only 0.2 ‰. At the insistence of the Supervisory Board, a special editing department was set up. According to Klaus Donaubauer, the episcopal finance director of the Diocese of Augsburg and then chairman of the Weltbild supervisory board, it had the task of removing "publications that were not tolerable in terms of content" from distribution.

Economic situation and owner resolutions of the former church shareholders

The German Bishops' Conference decided at the end of November 2011 to part with the publisher "without delay". According to a press release by the Permanent Council of the Bishops' Conference on November 22, 2011, "the internet-based distribution and the production of media that contradict the ideational goals of the shareholders in their own area or in the area of ​​company investments" could not be adequately prevented. The credibility of the publishing group and its shareholders would have suffered as a result.

On June 26, 2012, the shareholders' meeting decided to bring all shares in the Weltbild publishing group into a church foundation under public law to be established . This should become the sole shareholder of the Weltbild publishing group. However, this did not happen at first.

In September 2013, the publishing group faced bankruptcy. Some dioceses considered selling Weltbild. The steadily deteriorating earnings situation since 2011 made a possible sale difficult.

In October 2013 it was announced that the Weltbild publishing group intended to outsource customer service, which would result in the loss of 140 jobs at the publishing group. The Verdi union rated the outsourcing efforts as an "organized orgy of clear cuts".

insolvency

Since representatives of the shareholders of the publishing group could not agree on further financing on January 10, 2014, the company filed for bankruptcy . On February 15, 2014, the Augsburg District Court revoked the management around Carel Halff of the administrative and asset authority over the company Weltbild and entrusted them to the insolvency administrator Arndt Geiwitz.

New owner

The insolvency administrator negotiated with several investors. On August 2, 2014, the financial company Droege International Group (retroactively to July 1, 2014) joined as the new majority owner. As a result of a capital increase, Droege has since held 60% of the shares, the previous owners kept 40%. Droege sold 67 loss-making branches to Lesensart Rüdiger Wenk GmbH. This closed some branches, then also filed for bankruptcy on July 22, 2015.

After the company had stabilized, Droege also acquired the remaining shares in 2017. The company intends to increase the proportion of the "non-media business" (items other than books and CDs) to just under 50% of total sales by 2019.

Others

Since March 2012, Weltbild has been marketing the data from around five million customer addresses from the entire publishing group through AZ Direkt GmbH , a subsidiary of Bertelsmann AG . Because of the list privilege , this was possible until May 25, 2018, when the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) came into force , without the customer's consent.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ weltbild.com: Imprint
  2. ↑ Shortly before Christmas: Weltbild dismisses 48 employees , Augsburger Allgemeine, December 22, 2015.
  3. ^ A b Georg Giersberg: The Weltbild media company also sells jewelry. Above-average sales growth, especially in shipping . In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of September 22, 2017, p. 24.
  4. ↑ a b The Weltbild publishing group becomes Weltbild Retail / transfer of customer data begins. In: boersenblatt.net. September 18, 2014, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Weltbild now entirely at Droege . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung of June 21, 2017, p. 20.
  6. ↑ Who we are. In: weltbild.com. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .
  7. ^ Catholic News Agency , October 10, 2014.
  8. ↑ Out for the joint venture with Weltbild / Droemer Knaur, soon to be solely owned by Holtzbrinck. In: boersenblatt.net. July 3, 2013, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  9. ↑ Carel Halff , in: Internationales Biographisches Archiv 08/2012 of February 21, 2012, in the Munzinger archive ( beginning of article freely accessible)
  10. ↑  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Dead Link / www.weltbild.com
  11. ↑ Stefan Stahl: Weltbild is back in the black for the first time since bankruptcy . In: Augsburger Allgemeine, Augsburg edition, November 17, 2018.
  12. ↑ Weltbild will be represented nationwide with 85 branches. In: weltbild.com. March 3, 2015, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Branches , accessed on July 10, 2018.
  14. ↑ The story of Weltbild , accessed on July 10, 2018.
  15. ^ Department store / Weltbild best shop at Ratio in Löhne. In: boersenblatt.net. June 22, 2007. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .
  16. ↑ Weltbild restructures branches / 322 jobs are eliminated - book market. In: buchmarkt.de. January 31, 2017, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Range / Today there was a strike at Weltbild. In: boersenblatt.net. May 29, 2009. Retrieved January 21, 2017 .
  18. ^ Stefan Mayr, Katja Riedel: Separation from Weltbild-Verlag. Hugendubel saved himself from the bankruptcy vortex . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, February 21, 2014.
  19. ^ Karstadt / Start of Weltbild and Hugendubel. In: boersenblatt.net. July 3, 2008, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Annual Outlook, Part 8 / From bankruptcies, bad luck and breakdowns: Department stores 2010. In: boersenblatt.net. December 30, 2009, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  21. ↑ Weltbild says goodbye to Poland on buchreport.de on January 2, 2013.
  22. ↑ Weltbild and the pornography allegations. (No longer available online.) In: augsburger-allgemeine.de. November 3, 2011, archived from the original on January 18, 2017 ; accessed on January 21, 2017 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.augsburger-allgemeine.de
  23. ↑ Alexander Kissler: The Church and Sex: “New Love Games” with an episcopal blessing? In: Focus Online. October 28, 2011, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  24. ^ German Bishops' Conference, press release (November 22, 2011): Statement of the plenary assembly of the Association of Dioceses of Germany on the current debate about the publishing group Weltbild GmbH
  25. ^ Daniel Deckers: Insolvency of Weltbild-Verlag averted for the time being. In: faz.net. November 3, 2013, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  26. ↑ Daniel Deckers: Of Morality and Torment. In: faz.net. November 21, 2011, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  27. ^ Daniel Deckers: Publishing group Weltbild acutely threatened. In: faz.net. September 9, 2013, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  28. ↑ Georg Giersberg: Weltbild needs its owners. In: faz.net. September 9, 2013, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  29. ↑ Around 140 employees are affected / Weltbild is outsourcing its customer service. In: boersenblatt.net. October 21, 2013, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  30. ↑ Oliver Stock: Churches herald the last hour of the worldview. In: handelsblatt.com. January 10, 2014, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  31. ↑ Weltbild-Verlag is insolvent. In: Spiegel Online. January 10, 2014, accessed December 11, 2014 .
  32. ^ Previous management of Weltbild disempowered , kath.net, January 19, 2014.
  33. ^ Catholic News Agency, October 10, 2014.
  34. ↑ Stefan Mayr: Chaos in the sham package. One and a half years after bankruptcy: Weltbild decides to open new stores. But things are looking bad for many branches that have been sold. Your new owner Reading is grappling with problems . In: Süddeutsche Zeitung, June 1, 2015, p. 19.
  35. ↑ DPA: Weltbild-Buyer Lesensart is insolvent. In: FAZ.net . July 23, 2015, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  36. ↑ Stephan Teine: Dubious Weltbild buyer reports bankruptcy. In: muensterlandzeitung.de. July 23, 2015, accessed January 21, 2017 .
  37. ↑ Weltbild Group: Investor completes takeover , accessed on September 29, 2017.
  38. ↑ Press report on the cooperation
  39. ↑ What is so special about Weltbild Score +? - AZ Direkt sales page ( Memento of the original from May 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.beektiven-ohne-ende.de

Coordinates: 48 ° 23 '44.8 "  N , 10 ° 55' 44"  E