The German department store chain Karstadt and the logistics service provider Fiege are founding a new logistics company. From 2020, the joint venture Fiege X Log will take over all of Karstadt’s logistics. In addition, Fiege X Log will offer its expertise and performance to other companies on the market in the future.
Karstadt CEO Stephan Fanderl explains: “Karstadt is successfully developing into a networked marketplace with many partners. With our branches we have 79 logistics locations in the middle of the city center and a central warehouse. Our new partner Fiege is a very experienced logistics service provider with extensive omnichannel and fulfillment expertise. We will now combine the best of the two worlds of trade and logistics services in a joint venture.” The result will be tailor-made and highly efficient logistics for both Karstadt and third party customers.
“Through our joint venture, we support Karstadt in its own responsibility for logistics and to benefit customers with new services,” explains Jens Fiege, CEO of the Greven family-owned company. “In an omnichannel approach, we will therefore be better at networking e-commerce, brick-and-mortar retail and the marketplace business and, in addition, offering the end customer further innovative services.”
The new logistics structure for Karstadt is already being developed. The measures taken previously, in the course of the modernisation, such as the segregation of functions in the branches in logistics, cash register and sales, have created essential conditions for this.
“It was particularly important to us to bring the logistics outsourced since 2005 back to us,” explains Miguel Müllenbach, Karstadt’s Chief Finance Officer and Labor Director. “Running the logistics for your own locations is a core competency for a retailer that we must and want to master ourselves.” The additional clout of the new joint venture in the course of the planned merger of Karstadt and Kaufhof with a considerable number of inner-city logistics hubs would in turn also benefit external customers.
The foundation of Fiege X Log as well as the merger of Karstadt and Kaufhof still require approval from the relevant antitrust authorities.
