We told you about it a few days ago, Inno stores are facing great financial difficulties. Indeed, Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof, a German group that owns Inno Belgium in particular, had already announced compulsory layoffs last year.
The group must urgently pay off several tens of millions of euros in debt. To do this, the Germans would consider selling their Belgian branch. Belgian stores have been doing much better financially for two years, stopping the bleeding (which had reached 20 million euros in losses one year) and returning to profitability at the end of 2022.
Inno’s parent company wants to close at least one in three stores in Germany
The sale of the 16 branches concerned should help it repay these large debts. A wider restructuring of the group is also in the pipeline, according to The mirror et Handelsblatttaken up by the Belgian specialist magazine Gondola.
Sixteen stores are affected in Belgium, including four in Brussels and three in Wallonia: Liège, Charleroi and Namur. A thousand employees in total are threatened.
“The absence of an accomplished online sales channel” but also “lost market share to new competitors in the sector” could explain the group’s precarious situation.
At this stage, the parent company has not disclosed any timetable for operations.