“This is one of the rare situations in which one and one equals more than two,” says Marc Appelhoff.
In the description of the advantages of taking over the home decoration chain Butlers for his online furniture retailer Home 24, the CEO can hardly keep up.
Bastian Benrath
Editor in business.
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Jonas Jansen
Business correspondent in Düsseldorf.
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On the one hand, there are the product ranges: Customers buy decorations for their own four walls very regularly, but they don't spend much money on each purchase - it is the other way around with furniture. Then there are the complementary customer bases: Butlers is present in many pedestrian zones, while Home 24, apart from a few showrooms, has so far been a pure online retailer. In short: "We are starting to prove the potential over the coming years," says Appelhoff.
In view of the prospect of Home-24 sales of around 640 million euros this year, Appelhoff is getting the Cologne retail chain at a low price.
65 percent of the purchase price for three quarters of the Butlers shares have been firmly agreed and, minus debts, amounted to 38 million euros.
The rest of the price for the purchase shares will be calculated depending on the achievement of goals.
The remaining quarter of the Butlers shares are brought in by the founder and managing partner Wilhelm Josten in exchange for Home-24 shares, and in future he is to hold 3.9 percent of the shares.
The takeover should be completed in the second quarter of next year.
The takeover was positively received on the stock exchange on Thursday, with the Home 24 share price gaining around 4 percent.
Crisis-proven family company
For Butlers, it didn't take a corona pandemic with closed shops to be crisis-tested.
The family company had to go through a bankruptcy in 2017, in the course of which around 30 branches were closed.
Since then, things have been on the up again: the retail chain operates 100 branches in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, plus 32 franchise partner houses in Europe.
This year Josten expects sales of around 95 million euros.
In the two years marked by lockdowns, 2020 and 2021, Butlers worked “significantly profitably”; according to the latest figures available in the Federal Gazette, sales of around 80 million euros in 2019 resulted in a surplus of around 900,000 euros.
Josten founded the company in 1999 with his brother and another business partner in Cologne.
The entrepreneur comes from a department store family, after having worked at Aldi, among others, the business economist started his own business.
Today he is still the largest shareholder in Butlers
“Our respective strengths come to the fore even more with our merger.
The result is growth, ”says Josten confidently.
In this way jobs could be kept and new ones created.
The managing director remains on board, he should, according to Appelhoff, take on an "integral part" in the management of the merged company.
The brands should also be retained.
Online and offline together as a future model
While other German interior design chains such as Strauss Innovation have not existed for a long time, Butlers has always been able to assert itself against the competition in the city center through shops such as Depot or the furnishing giant Ikea. In recent years, new competitors from abroad have become more present, such as Muji from Japan or Søstrene Grene and Flying Tiger from Denmark.
The fact that Butlers was able to survive is related to two factors: On the one hand, the designers in this country develop a good 3,000 items a year, but they are made in Asia, which makes them cheap. Josten once called it the “democratization of good taste”. On the other hand, the chain has had an online shop since 2007 - so the business is no stranger to Cologne. As part of the merger, areas for Home-24 furniture are to be created in a number of Butlers branches - which have already been selected - in order to interest customers in furniture when buying decoration.
The Association of the Furniture Industry also sees this model as trend-setting.
Association manager Jan Kurth estimates that at least 20 percent of furniture is now being bought on the Internet.
A combination of online sales and stationary presence offers "good opportunities to combine the haptic experience on site with the variety of options on the Internet".