VIENNA, Nov. 22 (Xinhua) -- The Austrian furniture store chain XXXLutz announced on Friday that a series of acquisitions have made the Wels-based company the second largest furniture retailer in the world after Ikea of Sweden.
"We want to be number one wherever we are. That is not a secret. We do not want purely digital players and the Americans to take over the furniture retailing business in Europe," said XXXLutz spokesman and marketing head Thomas Saliger. "A non-hotelier invented booking.com, a non-taxi driver invented Uber. We will not let that happen to us," continued Saliger.
According to the Austrian broadcaster ORF, the XXXLutz group is now number two because of its purchase of fellow Austrian group Kika's Eastern European business, its acquisition of the Pfister Group in Switzerland as well as Roller and tejo/Schulenburg in Germany.
XXXLutz now faces the challenge of integrating all of these purchases to consolidate its position ahead of German competitor Steinhoff, says the Viennese daily Die Kronen Zeitung.
Both XXXLutz and Steinhoff are expected to post turnover in excess of 9 billion euros, with XXXLutz theoretically reaching a figure of 9.7 billion after its acquisitions. However, IKEA still dwarfs both XXXLutz and Steinhoff with its turnover of over 37 billion, says the Kronen Zeitung.
XXXLutz is not considering expanding its presence into new markets at the moment. "One or two countries might be added to the XXXLutz markets in the next years, that might happen," said Saliger.
For now, XXXLutz is concentrating on growth within the existing markets, such as Germany, Serbia and Romania. Due to its purchase of the Swiss group Pfister in October, XXXLutz now has 24 new retailing outlets in Switzerland alone, although Poland is also an interesting market, according to the Kronen Zeitung. The newspaper also says that the group has no intention of expanding outside of Europe.
