Buon giorno Italia!

The Krefeld company also succeeded in increasing comparable store sales throughout Europe by just under 3 per cent. No profit figures were released, although Torsten Toeller stressed that the earnings situation had improved further in the year just ended.
Fressnapf opened 60 new stores in Germany last year, along with 36 new outlets in the rest of Europe. And there is to be no let-up in the rate of expansion in Germany in 2005, with 50 out of a total of 75 new stores planned opening there this year. The company intends to increase the number of stores it operates to approximately 800 by 2007.
The dream team: Torsten Toeller and Heidi Obermeier.
Nevertheless, the Fressnapf boss is expecting the focus of the firm’s activities to shift abroad gradually in the next few years. Sales in the 120-plus stores outside Germany currently account for 15 per cent of the overall sales figure; in ten years Toeller can imagine the proportion of sales deriving from operations abroad possibly rising to 50 per cent.
Following its market launch in France in August 2004, Fressnapf is looking in all probability to enter the Italian market this year. Negotiations with the future master franchisee are nearing a successful conclusion, according to Torsten Toeller, and the final decision is expected in the next few weeks. Fressnapf will also be devoting considerable attention to the Austrian market in the future. Thanks to Heidi Obermeier, managing director of Fressnapf Austria, whom Toeller particularly praised along with her team, the number of stores in Austria has doubled in the last two-and-a-half years. With sales of 42 mio € in 2004 compared with 32 mio € the previous year, Austria is Fressnapf’s most successful market outside Germany. Torsten Toeller estimates the company’s share of the Austrian market currently at 11 per cent, and the opening of its 50th store there, in the Auhof area of Vienna, coincided with the holding of the annual press conference. Heidi Obermeier intends to keep up the pace in the next few months too, with ten new stores expected to open in the country this year. Activity will focus on the Austrian capital Vienna, with five new openings there.
Plans are in hand to expand the number of stores in Austria to 80 in all by 2007, according to Obermeier. And Fressnapf is also considering testing a type of “city concept” in Vienna: since a large proportion of trade in the city is transacted in shopping centres, Fressnapf envisages capturing new categories of…