A retail era ends

Kika/Leiner out: an era comes to an end in Graz

The Leiner store near Graz main station.

(Bild: Juergen Fuchs)

With the bankruptcy of the ailing furniture chain Kika/Leiner, the last two remaining Styrian branches in Graz are also closing, affecting 160 employees. The Leiner location near the main railway station is particularly legendary. It is a serious setback for the already struggling district. 

The glory days are long gone, when Graz's Annenstraße was one of the most important shopping streets in Austria in the 1970s. This golden decade also saw the opening of the Leiner furniture store in 1971, a first in the provincial capital on this scale. Three years later, Kika opened a branch in Graz-Webling.

Now the final end of this furniture store era in Graz has been sealed. As was announced on Wednesday, the furniture chain Kika/Leiner, which has been struggling for years, has withdrawn the restructuring plan it submitted in November and filed for bankruptcy. After four Kika/Leiner branches in Styria were closed in the course of the first insolvency last year, the last two remaining branches in Graz will now follow.

We are standing by and will of course hold meetings again and inform those affected about their rights

Gewerkschafter Norbert Schunko

Bild: Jörg Schwaiger

160 employees lose their jobs
"Unfortunately, this was to be expected, it was foreseeable from the basic structure," says Norbert Schunko, regional managing director of the GPA trade union, with little surprise. Around 160 employees are affected. "We are standing by and will of course hold meetings again and inform those affected about their rights," says Schunko.

Over 280 employees were affected by the last closures in Styria. "Of these, 19 are still unemployed. Many were also taken on by XXXLutz," explains the trade unionist. For the employees now affected, the job search is likely to be more difficult.

The Kika store in Graz was only renovated in 2020.

(Bild: Juergen Fuchs)

What will happen to the buildings?
It will also be interesting to see what happens to the huge properties in Annenstraße and Weblinger Kreis. The Kika store with around 20,000 square meters of exhibition space was not extensively renovated until 2020. Leiner, with around 15,500 square meters, celebrated its grand reopening in 2016 after extensive modernization. In 2013, a major fire including explosions during construction work on the Leiner roof caused a sensation.

The Leiner fire caused a stir throughout the city in 2013.

(Bild: Radspieler Jürgen)

Now, a good ten years later, there is another fire on the roof at Kika/Leiner - albeit only literally. The liquidator will decide when exactly the stores will close. First of all, however, they will try to get rid of as much merchandise as possible by selling it off. 

The closure of Leiner in particular is a heavy blow, as the once flourishing Annenstraße has been in crisis for years. Directly opposite, the Annenpassage has been closed for years and its future use is completely unclear.

XXXLutz buys two Styrian stores
Last year, in the course of the first insolvency, four Styrian branches of Kika/Leiner were closed. What happened to them? Well, the former Kika location in Liezen and the Leiner branch in Judenburg have been taken over by furniture giant XXXLutz, as spokesman Thomas Saliger confirmed to the "Krone" newspaper. What is to happen with the two properties is currently being evaluated.

There was a Kika store in Leoben. This was acquired by the busy online auction house Aurena from neighboring Niklasdorf and is currently being used as a warehouse. A lot has also happened in Feldbach, where the local entrepreneur Erwin Teller bought the Kika. Among other things, there is now a Hervis outlet here.