It is a hard blow to the city center of Graz: fashion company H&M will close its location on the central square this year. This makes the prominent location join an increasingly longer list of vacant buildings. Dozens of employees are affected.
The city center of Graz has challenging times: Café Sacher recently announced his departure from the city center, but also retail chains such as Salamander, Schuhekönig and Zara had to close. Now the “Krone” has the following bad news: the Swedish fashion brand H&M closes its location on the central square of Graz.
“We can confirm that the H&M store will close later this year,” it says. Further backgrounds or causes are not mentioned for the time being. Anyway it would have been economically difficult to operate two such large stores in the immediate vicinity of Graz (Hauptplatz and Eisernes Tor). The Swedish fashion chain has a global turnover of 17.6 billion euros and 143,000 employees, but it is not going well lately.
According to the most recent study by consultancy firm Lage + Markt, last year, only 3.2 percent of the buildings in the city center of Graz were empty, but many prominent business premises were hit, making passers -by in the Herrengasse an increasingly gloomy image and beyond. A study by the Stiermarkse Chamber of Commerce also shows that nowadays there are ten percent fewer commercial companies in the Graz-Stadt district than ten years ago. Only on Thursday did the WKO call for protest for this reason.
And what does the closure mean for the employees of the location? “Our employees are our top priority at H&M. Our colleagues in our store on the central square are offered options and opportunities on a follow-up service at H&M ”, according to the fashion giant on Thursday afternoon via e-mail.
Source: Krone
I’m Ben Stock, a journalist and author at Today Times Live. I specialize in economic news and have been working in the news industry for over five years. My experience spans from local journalism to international business reporting. In my career I’ve had the opportunity to interview some of the world’s leading economists and financial experts, giving me an insight into global trends that is unique among journalists.
