BauMax
 |
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Fate | Dissolved |
| Founded | 1976 in Klosterneuburg, Austria |
| Founder | Karlheinz Essl, Sr. |
| Defunct | 2015 |
| Headquarters | Klosterneuburg, Austria |
|
Key people
|
Michael Hürter, CEO |
| Products | Home improvement products |
| Revenue |
 €1,130 million (2013) |
|
(€189 million) (2013) |
|
|
Number of employees
|
6,200 (2015) |
| Website | www.baumax.com |
The Baumax AG (own spelling: bauMax) was an Austrian chain of home improvement stores. It was founded in 1976 by Karlheinz Essl, Sr. in the city of Klosterneuburg and operated more than 150 stores in Austria and several countries of Eastern Europe. As of 2010, the company employed over 9,000 people and generated an annual revenue of 1.13 billion euros. When the business came into financial trouble during the 2007 financial crisis, it was finally broken up by creditors in 2014/15.
In 1958 Karlheinz Essl, Sr., son of a food wholesaler from Carinthia, went to the City of New York to study the principle of self-service stores of American supermarkets. Back home he decided to transform the building materials business of his father-in-law into self-service operation by 1976. The concept proved successful, and by the mid-1980s, the company was the clear market leader in Austria.
Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Mr. Essl faced the crumbling facades of the former Eastern Bloc countries and realized that he had found a huge new market for his building supplies. Already in 1992 the first stores were opened in the former Czechoslovakia. Within the next 20 years, more than 50 additional stores were erected in Slovenia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Croatia and Turkey. By 2010, Baumax operated 160 stores in nine countries and employed over 9,000 people.
In 1999, Karlheinz' son Martin Essl became CEO, but the former still interfered heavily into daily business and met most of the operational decisions. This constitution became particularly problematic as Karlheinz Essl proved unable to cope with the task of running a business of such size properly. Moreover, he was almost immune to any suggestions and did not have any belief in his management staff at all.
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Wikipedia