Ralph Hartmann, since November 2007 the boss of the Karstadt Sports network of sports superstores, left the group at his own request effective Dec. 31. Hartmann had replaced Willi Darr, who switched to the executive board of Metro before he left recently. The new leader of the 28 sports-dedicated stores is Günther Föckersperger, a former sales director of Karstadt’s department stores. He is now in charge of Karstadt Sports as well as the top 10 best-selling Karstadt stores aside from its “premier” outlets, which are in the Alsterhaus in Hamburg, Oberpollinger in Munich and at KaDeWe in Berlin.
In its last fiscal year ended Sept. 30, Arcandor, the parent company of Karstadt as well as Primondo (formerly known as Quelle) and the travel operator Thomas Cook, had no good news from its Karstadt Sports operations. Sales went down by 1.3 percent to €247.8 million, due in part to the closing of two sports shops. This figure is only for the 28 Karstadt specialty sports stores and does not include sales in the sports sections of the department stores. These departments added another €145 million worth of sporting goods revenues, and a company spokesperson said they were stable. The figures are for Karstadt alone and do not include Quelle, the sister company for mail-order.
Meanwhile, rumors came up last week that Wal-Mart, the market leader in worldwide retailing, might buy a stake in Arcandor. Arcandor executives did not comment. In fact, it is hard to believe that Wal-Mart is trying again to make it into the German market. It acquired a chain that was not in good shape, Wertkauf, in the late 1990s and pulled out of that business black-eyed some two years ago by selling the loss-maker to the Metro Group. Arcandor is controlled by two minority shareholders: One is Sal. Oppenheim with a stake of 28.59 percent, and the other is the so-called Pool Madeleine Schickedanz, which has 26.47 percent. Schickedanz is the daughter of the founder of Quelle.
