Pick-up services, delivery service, live events with midwives online: Germany’s largest drugstore has continued to grow with “Omnichannel”, addressing customers on all channels. Cheap own brands and organic products are increasingly in demand. “Ecological sustainability is not a luxury topic,” said company boss Christoph Werner on Thursday at the presentation of the business figures in Karlsruhe. “It moves people.”
The around 200 pick-up stations, where customers can collect products ordered online at a branch, are particularly popular. They have become an important part of the dm markets in the past few months, said Werner. Up to 700 are planned.
Experiments are also being carried out with express home deliveries by e-bike. It already exists in Karlsruhe, Stuttgart, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt and Düsseldorf. According to Werner, the shopping behavior of customers is changing. The drugstore chain wants to take this into account with a tailor-made service.
Costs should not be passed on in full
According to the company, rising purchase prices should not be passed on to customers in full. Long-term contracts and increased efficiency have so far been able to dampen the effects. In the crisis, people resorted to cheaper products, but there were no hamster purchases. Only after the end of a toilet paper manufacturer was there an increased demand for toilet paper. Candles also did well during the crisis.
Sales at dm rose by 10.7 percent to EUR 13.6 billion in the past financial year (September 30). Growth of 13.5 percent was achieved in the foreign companies. In Germany, dm increased by 9.7 percent to 9.9 billion euros. dm basically does not give any information about the profit.
The company has a total of 3,945 branches in 14 countries, employing almost 72,000 people across Europe. Five stores in Poland are new this year. dm also wants to continue investing in Germany: Werner announced that he would invest more than 160 million euros in the German branch network in the 2022/2023 financial year.
Werner explained that in the 2021/2022 financial year, with a market share of 21 percent, more items were sold than all other drugstores combined.
