Fourlis Holdings
IKEA, but Greek style
Fourlis Holdings ($FOYRK.AT) is a €200 million Greek retailer of consumer durable goods (home furniture through IKEA and sporting goods through both INTERSPORT and Foot Locker) with activities in Greece, Romania, Bulgaria and Cyprus. As far as I know, it’s the only publicly listed IKEA franchisee in the world (feel free to correct me).
History
Originally founded in 1950 as Fourlis Bros - from its founders Anastasios, Stylianos, Yannis and Ilias Fourlis - to import and sells electrical appliances from Germany, in the 1960s it diversified into importing and assembling American-made kitchen exhaust fans, RCA and Westinghouse television sets and Philco washing machines. In the 1970s it added General Electric’s home appliances and Telefunken TV sets. However, due to intense competition from Asian manufacturers, the assembly of TV sets was discontinued in the early 1980s.
Following some domestic consolidation and due to favourable political reforms, the 1990s saw the beginning of the expansion strategy in Eastern Europe, including a retail computer and mobile telephony store chain. Last but obviously not least, the end of last century sowed the seeds of the current Fourlis, with the agreements with IKEA for home furnishings and appliances for the Greek market in 1999 and with INTERSPORT for sporting goods in 2000.
Following the escalation of the debt crisis in Greece in 2011 which significantly impacted consumption, the wholesale trading of electric appliances business was dismissed in 2014 (the distribution of Samsung mobile phones had already been discontinued in 2009, while the assembly of electric and electronic products was sold to Dixons Group in 2004).
Today, the group operates four divisions:
Retail Home Furnishings (IKEA stores)
Retail Sporting Goods (INTERSPORT and Foot Locker stores)
Retail Health & Wellness (Holland & Barrett stores)
Real Estate Investments (through Trades Estates REIC)
The group has been listed on the Athens Stock Exchange since 1988. The board of directors is composed of 8 members, of which 4 are considered independent: Vassilis Fourlis (son of Stylianos) is the Chairman, while his sister Dafni Fourlis is Vice Chairman. The family owns a ~17% stake in the company, with the rest being free float.