Austrian furniture giant XXXLutz takes over Conforama Switzerland

XXXLutz buys the Conforama Switzerland brand and its twenty stores from the Vaudois entrepreneur Dan Mamane. The sale of the 50% stake that Dan Mamane still held was finalized last week. The amount of the transaction was not disclosed.

The transaction had been in the air since November 2021, when a company affiliated with XXXLutz entered Conforama’s capital. The Austrian group, owned by the Seifert family, is already number two in the Swiss furniture market with the Lipo, Mömax and Pfister brands.

Founded at the end of the Second World War, XXXLutz began with craftsmanship, before taking off and becoming a furniture giant that opens an average of six new stores a year. The company has become a furniture empire that shares the market with the Swedish giant Ikea.

XXXLutz burst onto the Swiss market in 2018 by taking over Pfister and certain Interio stores, whose brand was disappearing in favor of Mömax. The Austrian giant then bought the hard discounter Lipo and its 23 subsidiaries.

With the takeover of Conforama, XXXLutz is present in all furniture segments, from bargain prices to top of the range, gradually taking more and more market share. The group is growing by acquisition, driven by the high purchasing power of consumers in Switzerland.

“A beautiful financial transaction”

As a reminder, Conforama Switzerland had been bought by Dan Mamane in July 2020. After thirty months of restructuring, the latter therefore bows out and mentions in the columns of the magazine Bilan “a great financial transaction”, but without revealing the amount of the takeover. .

During the restructuring process, Conforama was deleveraged, thanks in particular to the sale of the premises in 2021. Cash flow increased by more than 20% and more than 18 million francs were invested in IT tools, revealed Dan Mamane, who says he is betting on digitization.

No immediate change of direction

The workforce has also increased from 1,200 employees to 850 today. As for online turnover, it increased by 44% in the second half of 2022 and now represents 15% of sales.

It was agreed with XXXLutz that the management put in place by Dan Mamane remains in office “as long as it is deemed useful”, he further specified.

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