Status: 04/24/2023 2:03 p.m
The men’s fashion manufacturer Ahlers is filing for bankruptcy due to impending insolvency. Another company from the fashion industry with well-known brands goes bankrupt.
The economic problems in the German fashion industry are getting more and more companies into trouble. The men’s fashion manufacturer Ahlers announced today that it would file for insolvency for Ahlers AG and seven subsidiaries at the District Court of Bielefeld due to impending insolvency.
The subsidiaries are Ahlers PC GmbH, Ahlers Retail GmbH, Ahlers Zentralverwaltung GmbH, Ahlers Vertrieb GmbH, Pioneer Professional Clothing GmbH, Pioneer Jeans-Beclothing GmbH and Baldessarini GmbH. The companies from abroad, on the other hand, are currently not affected.
Business development under plan
The main trigger for the decision was the business development, which was below planning, said company boss Stella Ahlers. The consequences of the corona pandemic and the associated disrupted supply chains, general reluctance to buy, high inflation and bankruptcies in retail made the step inevitable. Nevertheless, she sees future options for the company, emphasized Ahlers.
With brands such as Baldessarini, Pierre Cardin, Pioneer and Otto Kern, Ahlers generated sales of EUR 171 million in the 2021/22 financial year. According to the company, this is an increase of 19.9 percent over the previous year. The revenues were thus below the pre-Corona level of 207 million euros from the 2018/2019 financial year.
Ahlers currently employs around 1700 people. Around 400 employees work in the companies affected by the insolvency applications. They receive insolvency money from the Federal Employment Agency for the months of April, May and June.
Bankruptcies in the fashion industry are piling up
As the “Handelsblatt” reports, 27 fashion and shoe retailers went bankrupt in the first quarter of this year alone. That is more than twice as many as in the same period last year, as an evaluation by the management consultancy Falkensteg for the Handelsblatt shows. Meanwhile, the number of insolvencies in the economy as a whole has only gone up by 20 percent.
Just last week, the fashion manufacturer Gerry Weber announced that it would apply to the Essen district court to initiate proceedings under the law on the stabilization and restructuring framework for companies (StaRUG) in order to accelerate the company’s financial restructuring process. The aim of the StaRUG procedure is for entrepreneurs to be able to restructure their business without having to go through insolvency proceedings. At the same time, the German retail business of Gerry Weber Retail GmbH is to be restructured with the help of insolvency proceedings under self-administration.
Other well-known fashion and shoe companies are currently fighting for survival. The fashion retailer P&C recently submitted an application for a protective shield procedure. The protective shield is a judicial restructuring procedure with which the company can develop the measures required for restructuring and reorganization on its own responsibility and implement them at short notice under the supervision of a court-appointed provisional administrator.
The shoe retail chain Reno also recently filed for bankruptcy, last year the Hamburg shoe retailer Görtz went bankrupt.