Thalia (bookstore)

The Thalia Holding GmbH, based in Hamburg, is the holding company for several book trade and service companies that operate under the common brand name Thalia.

In September 2012, the Thalia Group comprised 296 bookstores, including 60 in Austria and Switzerland. In terms of sales, the company is now the market leader in Germany.

In the course of accelerating predatory pricing and the chain stores in bookstores falls beside the Thalia Group and the Weltbild publishing group also Mayersche bookstore chain by a strong expansion with acquisitions of owner-managed bookstores and start-ups of book houses on.

Group structure

The shareholders of the " Thalia Holding GmbH" are the " Buch & Medien GmbH" to 75% and the " Könnecke -Beteiligungs -GmbH" to 25 %. The "Book & Media GmbH" is 100 % owned by the Douglas Holding AG. Partner of " Könnecke -Beteiligungs -GmbH" are members of the Könnecke family who had acquired the company in 1931 Thalia. The company Thalia is involved as part of its multi -channel strategy with 75.6 % of the German online bookseller buch.de internetstores AG.

Development

The company was founded in Hamburg in 1919, opened in March 1997 in Bremen its first store outside of Hamburg, where the company operated twelve stores at this time.

For the purpose of uniform brand appearance since September 2005 operate the Austrian Thalia acquisitions under Thalia.at and the Swiss Jaeggi Group under Thalia.ch. In Linz, Austria since then is the largest bookstore throughout the Thalia Group.

At the beginning of 2006, Thalia as a leader in the German speaking market share of nearly seven percent. After the unification of Hugendubel book houses with over 350 sales points of Weltbild Publishing Group Thalia fell back to second place behind the newly formed thereby bookstores Group DBH. Self- declared goal of the Thalia Group in 2006 it was, in the medium term to more than double its market share in Germany.

As part of the 50th IFA Thalia introduced their own e-book reader " OYO ", which came in the German trade in the fall of 2010, significantly earlier than the competing device from Amazon ( "Kindle" ). A marketplace for direct publications offered Thalia April 21, 2011 but not yet on. Since the end of November 2012, with the e -book reader Odyssey HD Front Light by Bookeen a competitor to Amazon's Kindle Paperwhite on offer. Since March 2013 is also the similarly equipped reader Tolino shine in trade.

Acquisitions and investments (selection)

Criticism

Through its expansion policy, the bookstore chain Thalia gets amplified in the criticism, because it is feared that the central purchasing power could set the sales conditions of publishers under pressure. Larger publishers would be which although possibly can afford smaller but would waive the listing in the product range of the bookstore chain. In far-reaching lack of understanding also came in these contexts, the "Proposal " Thalia 2006 publishers like to participate financially in the development and the establishment of new companies branches.

Another point of criticism attempts Thalia to press by attacking the book prices, the margins of the smaller remaining bookstores and eliminating them so out of the market. It is worth noting that in the meantime are major acquisitions of the Thalia bookstores group subject to the approval of the Federal Cartel Office.

Also, local resistance to the expansion and controversial plans in this regard are noticeable. So Thalia has established in Bonn in the old Metropolitan Theatre in 2010 another branch in the city. In 2007, with the owner of the property, a lease closed, but a citizens' petition with 16,000 signatures brought protests from the local citizens expressed. The initiative "Save the Metropol" against the destruction of only a few years earlier faithfully reconstructed light play house in an Art Deco style, the last great house of its kind in Germany, and against the preservation contradictory use would prevent the conversion to a book retail outlet. However, the Higher Administrative Court of Münster was 26 August 2008 unexpectedly, leaving only the facade of the building disponer a monument property. Otherwise, the movie theater from the list of monuments of the city had to be deleted because it has the judge 's view, not enough original structure. The Senate made ​​a revision to the Federal Administrative Court not to. A complaint about it was rejected. The fact that for the previously faithfully restored glamorous interiors of the play of light theater, large subsidies were paid by conservation authorities, although shows a clear contradiction, but was ignored. After the official start of construction in 2009, the Thalia branch was opened in autumn 2010.

In 2010, Thalia Austria was accused of forcing a local publisher and bookseller, on pain of adjustment of existing supplier relationships for sale.