Expansion continues

The Krefeld company has invested around 180,000 euro in the store, one of the biggest in Austria with a retail area of 850 m². The store stocks a range of around 11,000 products for dogs, cats, rodents, birds and fish, as well as terrarium products.
The 500th Fressnapf is one of the biggest pet stores in Austria.
At the heart of the new store is a large aquatics department with 67 aquariums and a large selection of fish. “We are particularly pleased that the 500th Fressnapf in Europe is opening in Austria”, commented Heidi Obermeier, Fressnapf’s managing director in Austria. The company’s founder and proprietor Torsten Toeller also came to Vienna Neustadt from Germany to be present at the opening.There are now 30 Fressnapf stores in Austria, with a further 15 outlets expected to follow by the end of 2003. In the next five years, a total of 50 specialist stores are to be opened in the country. “We see extraordinarily good growth potential”, said Heidi Obermeier. There are now nine Fressnapf outlets in Lower Austria alone, and the company, employing a total of 170 staff, is the largest supplier of pet food and accessories in the trade. The company’s sales in Austrian markets amounted to 21.2 mio euro during the last financial year, which ended on 31 December 2002. A figure of over 30 mio euro is projected for the 2003 financial year.
At the heart of the new store is a large aquatics department. 
It is not just in Austria that Fressnapf is growing more quickly than the market: in the first quarter of 2003, the trading group, which also operates stores in Germany, Holland, Denmark, Luxemburg, Hungary and Switzerland, increased its Europe-wide sales by 20.2 per cent to over 122.5 mio euro compared with the same period in the previous year. Fressnapf intends to end the current financial year on 31 December with sales of 560 mio euro.    maj