Fressnapf extends its coverage further

Of the 1 079 stores operated by Fressnapf at the end of last year, 266 were located outside Germany. 50 of the 91 new outlets opened by the company in the last year alone are situated abroad. The majority of these are in France, where 16 new openings brought the total number of stores there to 43. The speciality chain also upped the tempo in Austria, where ten new stores opened, and in Hungary and Denmark with six and five new openings respectively. The company's relentless drive for expansion abroad had an impact on its revenues too. While Fressnapf increased its sales in Germany by 9 per cent to €831 mio in 2009, revenue from its foreign operations during the same period increased by as much as 20.5 per cent to €356 mio. In spite of this, sales on a comparable store area grew more strongly in Germany at 3.9 per cent than abroad, where the growth was 2.3 per cent. Nevertheless, Fressnapf CEO Torsten Toeller is pleased that his company has enjoyed a positive sales trend in each of the eleven countries into which it has expanded, although he conceded that the accessories market in Spain and Italy had nosedived somewhat as a result of the recession. Pet food continued to experience high growth in both of these countries. Staff changes To be able to achieve even faster growth outside its own domestic market in the future, the speciality chain is currently introducing a new organisational structure, resulting in some staff changes. Director Marc Lukies will support Johannes Croé, also a director, in managing international sales in the future and will be responsible for the markets in Benelux, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and Hungary in addition to Germany. Fressnapf is also planning to appoint a new director with responsibility for logistics, IT, master data and processes. A new division, Auditing, is being created and will be the responsibility of managing partner Torsten Toeller. To meet the greater demands of international markets, Stefan Schropp, former head of the National Sales Division, and Jochen Huppert, former head of the National Holdings Division, have been named as additional division heads for international sales alongside Michael Sperl. Schropp's successor as head of the National Sales Division is Axel Henschke, who has been in charge of the Marketing Division at Fressnapf since 2000. The Marketing Division will be the responsibility of Marco Theuring, departmental head of Domestic Marketing, until further notice. International logistics system…