Obi aims for further growth with franchise partners

Obi wants to grow more strongly through franchising. Sebastian Gundel, who has been CEO of Germany's largest and Europe's third-largest DIY store operator for a year, confirmed this in an interview, now published in the German trade journal diy-Fachmagazin. "Obi has grown very strongly through franchising and has thus become the best-known DIY brand in Germany," says Gundel. "We want our franchise partners to participate even more in our digitalisation. They also know that cross-channel works better than just stationary. In this way, we want to encourage existing franchisers to invest and expand, while at the same time attracting new partners."
Gundel also made clear strategic statements about Obi's positioning in the European DIY landscape: "We want to be the first port of call for home and garden and empower our customers to design their homes according to their own wishes and possibilities. This empowerment goes beyond the pure sales channel, which offers the bread-and-butter range and personal advice. Because digitalisation has made this empowerment much greater - independent of location and time and with an extended range of products."
You can read the entire interview at www.diyonline.de or in the English version here.