Anniversary for Baumax

The group's success story began in 1976 with the opening of a first DIY store at Kindberg on an area of 300 m². After steadily building up the organisation in Austria for about a dozen years the company reached a first turning point: the "bauMax 2000" marketing concept was drawn up and all existing DIY superstores were converted to this format. Internationalisation In the same year, with the collapse of the totalitarian regimes in eastern Europe, the company became active on an international scale, going for expansion in neighbouring countries to the east of Austria that were of interest to Baumax from the point of view of size. It was decided at that time to deal concurrently with Czechoslovakia, which then had a population of 15 million, and Hungary with its population of just over ten million as well. The first test stores became a reality in both countries in 1992. Since 1994 the group has been established in Slovakia, following the split between the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The Baumax takeover of the rival Büttinghaus group, which was the fourth largest Austrian DIY retailer at the time and already active in Slovenia, resulted in a fourth country being added to the total in 1995. Since the inclusion of Croatia at the end of 2000, Baumax is now represented in five countries outside Austria.
Kindberg was the site of the first Baumax DIY store in 1976However, it was not only towards the east that Baumax directed its expansionary efforts. It manifested interest in Italy, the neighbour to the south, where a start was made to analysing the potential there in 1997. The first stores were to have opened in Lombardy, but Baumax has now withdrawn from Italy. The Mega-Baumax concept A further decisive turning point in the company's history occurred in the autumn of 1996 with the opening of the first Mega-Baumax store in the Stadlau district of Vienna, an outlet covering an area of 13 000 m². It was Austria's third large-format DIY store, coming after Bauhaus (1994) and Hornbach (August 1996). This store was Baumax's answer to the trend in international retailing towards increasingly large formats. Integrated within this Mega-Baumax for the first time was a "Garten Max", the group's garden centre concept taking up an area of 5 000 m² and including an extremely large greenhouse.
This large-format concept has in the meantime been reworked, so that key points are now a larger building materials department and new forms of presentation. The sales mix has been…