Strong growth

Since their sales grew by € 1.1 bn (= 3.9 per cent) to more than € 29.4 bn (2010: € 28.3 bn) over the same period, the 20 biggest German DIY retailers and their stores at home and abroad achieved a like-for-like sales increase of 0.9 per cent in 2011. These are some of the figures announced by German trade publishers Dähne Verlag. The German sales of these 20 biggest companies grew by around 3.2 per cent in 2011 (€ 21.02 mio : € 20.37 mio 2010). Since the German sales area of the top 20 increased by 1.5 per cent during the same period (220 000 m² ; 14.59 m² in 2011, 14.37 mio m² in 2010), that works out at a like-for-like sales increase for the 20 biggest DIY companies in Germany of 1.6 per cent in 2011. The purely domestic space productivity of the “Top 20” rose from € 1 418 to € 1 441 (+ € 23). Last year the total retail area of all the DIY stores in Germany combined came to 18.983 mio m². If you multiply this total by the average space productivity of € 1.539 achieved by the “Top 30” the result is a figure of € 29.2 bn for the combined sales of all German DIY and home improvement stores together. This means that domestic sales increased by € 500 mio (+ 1.7 per cent) in 2011. When the international sales figure of around € 8.6 bn achieved abroad by German DIY retailers is added on, the result for all the domestic and foreign stores of German DIY companies taken together comes to sales of € 37.8 bn (2010: € 36.68 bn) in 2011; they succeeded in expanding by 3.1 per cent. As in the previous two years, the 10 biggest companies accounted for 94 per cent of the combined sales of the German “Top 20”. Moreover, these home improvement retailers were able to increase their space productivity from € 1 544 (2010) to € 1 567 (2011). In terms of last year’s sales growth compared to 2010, Obi leads the field with an annual sales increase of € 352 mio (+ 5.5 per cent) ahead of Bauhaus with an increase of € 310 mio (+ 7.0 per cent); these are followed by Hornbach with an increase of € 180 mio (+ 5.4 per cent) and Zeus with € 123 mio more (+ 4.9 per cent). Praktiker by comparison suffered a massive loss in 2011, recording sales down by a total of € 261 mio (- 6.6 per cent) on the 2010 result. Download: