BILLA is an Austrian supermarket chain that operates in central, eastern and southeastern Europe. The company was founded by Karl Wlaschek in 1953. He sold his controlling interest to Germany's REWE Group in 1996.
A retailers' cooperative is a type of cooperative which employs economies of scale on behalf of its retailer members. Retailers' cooperatives use their purchasing power to acquire discounts from manufacturers and often share marketing expenses. A retailers' cooperative is essentially a group of independently owned businesses that pool their resources to purchase in bulk, usually by establishing a central buying organization, and engage in joint promotion efforts. It is common for locally owned grocery stores, hardware stores, and pharmacies to participate in retailers' cooperatives.
Delhaize Group SA was a Belgian multinational retail company headquartered in Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Brussels, Belgium, and operated in seven countries and on three continents. The principal activity of Delhaize Group was the operation of food supermarkets. On 24 June 2015, Delhaize reached an agreement with Ahold to merge and form a new parent/holding company headquartered in the Netherlands: Ahold Delhaize.
Migros is Switzerland's largest retail company, its largest supermarket chain and largest employer. It is also one of the forty largest retailers in the world. It is structured in the form of a cooperative federation, with more than two million members.
The Edeka Group is the largest German supermarket corporation as of 2017, holding a market share of 25.3%. Founded in 1907, it currently consists of several co-operatives of independent supermarkets, all operating under the umbrella organisation Edeka Zentrale AG & Co KG, with headquarters in Hamburg. There are approximately 4,100 stores with the Edeka nameplate, ranging from small corner stores to hypermarkets. On 16 November 2007, Edeka reached an agreement with Tengelmann to purchase a 70% majority stake in Tengelmann's Plus discounter store division, which was then merged into Edeka's Netto brand, resulting in around 4,200 stores by 2018. Across all brands, the company operated a total of 13,646 stores at the end of 2017.
A consumers' co-operative is an enterprise owned by consumers and managed democratically and that aims at fulfilling the needs and aspirations of its members. Such co-operatives operate within the market system, independently of the state, as a form of mutual aid, oriented toward service rather than pecuniary profit. Many cooperatives, however, do have a degree of profit orientation. Just like other corporations, some cooperatives issue dividends to owners based on a share of total net profit or earnings ; or based on a percentage of the total amount of purchases made by the owner. Regardless of whether they issue a dividend or not, most consumers’ cooperatives will offer owners discounts and preferential access to goods and services.
Netto Marken-Discount is a German discount supermarket chain owned by the German supermarket cooperative Edeka Group, and operates mostly in the south and west of Germany. The company reached its 1000th store in 2004, then aggressively expanded to the 4000th store in 2009, making it the largest discounter in Germany.
Mein Real was a chain of hypermarkets in Germany owned by Metro AG until 2020 when it was sold to The SCP Group. It was formed in 1992, from the merger of chains divi, Basar, Continent, Esbella and real-kauf. Until 2014 it was also active internationally, in Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Turkey; most of these operations were bought by French retail company Auchan Group. In 2018, Metro decided to divest the Real chain and in 2021, many markets were taken over by either Edeka, Kaufland, Globus, Rewe or V-Markt and got rebranded with the brand of the respective new owner. The process of selling was finished by mid of 2022. However, the original plans to liquidate real completely were dropped in early 2022 when it was decided that the remaining 60 stores will continue under the real brand name under new ownership. Real's former website (real.de) was replaced by kaufland.de in 2021. The new website can be found at meinreal.de.
Kuoni Travel is a tourism company, operating various services including charter and scheduled passenger airlines, package holidays, cruise lines, and hotels in destinations around the world across nine different geographic regions.
Tengelmann Twenty-One KG is the Munich-based Holding of the Tengelmann Group, a family-owned company established in 1867. The company identifies as an active entrepreneurial family investor, currently holding shares in more than 50 companies in Europe and North America. The diverse portfolio includes large retailers such as OBI and KiK, the real estate company TREI, the energy consulting company Tengelmann Energie, the insurance company Tengelmann Assekuranz as well as Tengelmann Audit. Their affiliated investment companies Tengelmann Ventures, Emil Capital Partners and Tengelmann Growth Partners invest in Start-ups and Grown-ups in Europe and North America.
Plus was a German multinational discount supermarket chain founded in 1972. It operated 2,840 stores in Germany with an approximate 27,000 employees and about 1,200 stores in several other European countries. The retail model was to sell low-cost groceries with no expense incurred for display or marketing of products. Groceries were stored in the shipping cartons they came in, rather than being stacked on shelves. In German advertising, the name "Plus" was used as a backronym for "Prima leben und sparen", featuring animated "little prices" as their mascot.
Penny or internationally Penny Market is a German discount supermarket chain based in Germany, which operates 3,550 stores. The market was founded by Leibbrand Gruppe in 1973; since 1989, it has been fully owned by the Rewe Group.
Karl Wlaschek was the founder of the Austrian supermarket chain Billa. According to the magazine Trend, Wlaschek was one of the five richest Austrians. In 1996 he sold Billa for Euro 1.1 billion.
Rewe is a supermarket chain in Germany and the main brand of Rewe Group headquartered in Cologne. The name originated from an abbreviation of the original name "Revisionsverband der Westkauf-Genossenschaften". With about 3,300 stores, Rewe is the second largest food retailer in Germany behind EDEKA.
CV Villas is a London-based travel agency for villas in Greece, Italy, France, Spain, Portugal, Croatia, Turkey, Morocco, Florida, Sri Lanka and the Caribbean. Today, it is a specialist tour operator, selling villa holidays including flights, car hire and experiences directly to clients and through independent travel agents. The company has over 800 lodgings in the world.
IKI Lietuva, formerly known as Palink is the operator of the "IKI" supermarket chain and the "LastMile" delivery service in Lithuania.
Plus was a German multinational supermarkets that was operated in Germany and Poland by Rewe Group until 2006
