The German book trade is moving closer and closer together. After the book chain stores Thalia and Mayersche merged at the beginning of 2019, the Augsburg-based bookseller Weltbild has now announced that it will sell ten of its remaining 36 stores to Thalia. It concerns stores in Chemnitz, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Halberstadt, Leipzig, Nordhausen, Nuremberg, Potsdam, Suhl and Warendorf, which are to go to the Hagen company on October 1st. One location in Ahaus will change hands on August 1st. The two companies have agreed not to disclose the purchase price.
According to its own statements, Weltbild wants to push its online business further, but does not plan to transform itself completely into an online retailer. The corona pandemic has accelerated the shift to online trading, it is said. The remaining branches remained “an integral part of Weltbild’s multi-channel strategy,” says company boss Christian Sailer. “In the future, they will have more of the character of a ‘showroom’ for the brand.” Since the interim insolvency in 2014, Weltbild had successively reduced its branch network from initially far more than 150 locations. The Augsburg-based company currently still operates 30 stores in Switzerland and Austria as well as ten Jokers stores nationwide with remaining sales.
The competition from Hagen, on the other hand, is increasing once again and will be represented in seven other cities in the future. Thalia sales manager Ingo Kretzschmar indicates in a press release that the Weltbild stores would have been closed without the sale. “Our initiative keeps important and accessible places for reading,” he says. A Weltbild spokeswoman did not want to confirm that the sales figures generally played a role in the selection.
Thalia will thus have a branch network of around 330 stores in Germany in the future, around 60 of which come from the Aachen bookstore Mayersche, which went to Thalia in 2019. “The stationary book trade is and will remain an essential part of our omni-channel strategy”, says Thalia Sales Director Kretzschmar. The company also offers a purchasing, sales and IT platform for other booksellers. This is joined by the Tübingen book chain Osiander, who is currently converting its approximately 65 branches to the new system, but according to its own information does not intend to merge with Thalia.