Factory outlet
As a factory outlet , factory outlet , factory outlet , outlet store or factory outlet is called in the traditional sense, a retail outlet , their own products in the manufacturer directly sell mostly reduced prices to the end user. There are also other outlet concepts.
Direct sales
The operators can market their products below the usual price level , since at least one intermediary is omitted and the transport routes are often considerably shorter, especially if the sale takes place at the production site itself. The goods offered are often branded items , sometimes with manufacturing defects , pre-season / surplus goods or discontinued models, or goods previously unsold in normal stores. According to research by the WDR, inferior goods are also produced specifically for outlet stores.
Manufacturers who run their own shops with full-price goods, for example , like to relocate their unsold goods to the factory outlet in order to avoid cannibalizing between old, reduced-price and new, full- price goods in the shop. Factory stores are not necessarily in close proximity to the factory. The average size of the outlets is a hundred to three hundred square meters.
Factory outlet center
If several factory shops join together and offer their goods at a joint sales outlet that is managed by an operator, one speaks of a factory outlet center or Factory Outlet Center (FOC). This concept originally came from the USA and spilled over to Europe from the 1980s and to Germany from the early 1990s. Here, a distinction can be made between outlet shops - mostly well-known brands - within a large, enclosed building (in English: indoor outlet mall ) and outdoor shops positioned next to each other ( outdoor outlet mall ), such as the Wertheim Village .
Europe's largest operator of factory outlet centers is the British McArthurGlen Group (e.g. Berlin Designer Outlet ) with 21 FOCs in eight countries. The Spanish Neinver group (previously, for example, Zweibrücken The Style Outlets ) is the second largest outlet operator in Europe with 14 FOCs (ICSC ranking 2010). In April 2012, the group opened its youngest outlet center in Roppenheim, Alsace . Other operators are the British Value Retail with nine so-called Chic Outlet Shopping FOCs (e.g. Ingolstadt Village ) in seven countries and the British Freeport Leisure (e.g. Outlet Center Kleinhaugsdorf ) with four FOCs in four countries.
Off-Price Resellers
In addition to the factory sales, which are mostly operated directly by the respective manufacturer, there is also the concept of an outlet store operated by a so-called reseller with reduced-price goods ("off-price") from various brand manufacturers within a retail shop. Resellers mostly purchase their goods from the manufacturer (e.g. surplus goods or goods specially produced for the reseller), from retailers (e.g. goods not sold despite discounts ) or through other intermediaries. The British subsidiary T.K. Maxx from the American TJX Companies operates around 300 TK Maxx stores in four European countries as an off-price chain , of which over 40 are in Germany. So-called special item markets pursue a similar concept in the low-price segment , such as the Tengelmann Group from the end of the 1980s in Germany with the no longer existing Rudis Reste Rampe .
The principle of off-price resale has existed on the Internet since around the beginning of the 2000s in the form of closed shopping communities , where new goods are offered online to a closed group of members within a limited time frame, mostly at reduced prices and possibly from remnants of previous seasons . Depending on the organization of the offer, the community operator only transmits the collected orders to the manufacturer or wholesaler of the respective item after the sales campaign has been concluded, so that there is usually a certain waiting time for the customer until the goods are finally dispatched. The French vente-privee.com , founded in 2001, was a pioneer here.
Other outlet forms
In Metzingen , the seat of Hugo Boss , the factory sales of various companies have settled in the course of the years, initially without central administration, after the Hugo Boss company had started in the 1970s, so that one does not have to go from a single factory outlet there. Center, but rather an entire outlet city.
Since the terms have a positive connotation, they are often misused by other forms of distribution. Shops with the designation “Outlet” can be found more and more often, but there is no factory behind them. Such companies (e.g. Dänisches Bettenlager GmbH & Co. KG) are also referred to as a factory sales strategy .
Judgments
The Federal Court of Justice ruled on September 24, 2013 that the terms “outlet” and “factory outlet” are to be understood in the sense of a factory outlet and that goods originating from the supplier's production can be expected there, which are excluded from the wholesale and middlemen are offered particularly inexpensive. According to research by the WDR in November 2016, this expectation of the customer is often not met, as in some cases inferior goods are produced specifically for factory sales.
In recent years, there has been a trend towards the term outlet being used in connection with shops that are no longer operated by the manufacturer but by third parties. In order to make it easier for buyers to assess whether an outlet is operated directly by the manufacturer, an independent award was introduced.
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Outlet goods: ripple instead of designer bargains? ( Memento from October 23, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), WDR
- ↑ Online Outlet: Vente-Privee. Retrieved October 6, 2019 (German).
- ↑ BGH, judgment of 24.09.2013 - I ZR 89/12 - openJur. Retrieved October 6, 2019 .
- ↑ The best outlets. In: factory-outlets.org. Retrieved October 6, 2019 (German).
- ↑ Three factory sales from the region are among the top 20 , Südkurier from April 25, 2013