Actually, the traditional shop at Stachus should close in 2023. But now the Müller group, which runs the shop, has surprisingly extended the lease.
Surprising turnaround for a traditional Munich company: The toy shop Obletter am Stachus, which was supposed to close in 2023, is now staying. The Müller Group, which is best known for its drugstores but has also been running the Obletter since 1997, has surprisingly extended the lease for the shop, as Müller and Bayerische Hausbau as the lessor announced in a press release on Monday afternoon. “We are pleased that, after renewed discussions, we were able to find a solution together,” says Christian Balletshofer, Managing Director of Bayerische Hausbau. “That’s good news: not only for Munich families, but also for the attractiveness of the city center.”
The press release speaks of an “unexpected turn” and that Müller was “overwhelmed by the response from loyal Obletter customers”. When asked, the Müller Group said that it would continue to work with the same staff as before, so no job cuts were planned. One also sees “currently no need for a realignment of the business”, conversions are not planned.
Müller and Hausbau announced last December that the lease expired on January 31, 2023 – after intensively examining whether business operations could continue, as Hausbau explained at the time. But the last word was obviously not spoken. There was still a will to lead the Obletter “into the future in a fundamentally changing retail landscape,” according to the statement. The extension of the rental agreement, the term of which neither side has given any information about, applies to the entire sales area as well as to the basement and office areas belonging to it.
Obletter’s company history dates back to 1825. Even if the business has long belonged to a large corporation, many Munich residents felt that the closure would have meant the loss of another traditional store in the city center. Just recently, Sport Münzinger in the town hall and the stationery store Kaut-Bullinger on Rosenstrasse closed.