The Baumax AG (own spelling: bauMax) was an Austrian chain of home improvement stores. It was founded in 1976 by Karlheinz Essl Sr. in the city of Klosterneuburg and operated more than 150 stores in Austria and several countries of Central and Eastern Europe. In 2010, the company employed over 9,000 people and generated an annual revenue of 1.13 billion euros. The business came into financial trouble during the Great Recession. It was finally broken up by creditors in 2015/16.[3]
History
In 1958 Karlheinz Essl Sr., son of a food wholesaler from Carinthia, went to the City of New York to study the principle of self-service stores of American supermarkets. Back home he decided to transform the building materials business of his father-in-law into self-service operation by 1976. The concept proved successful, and by the mid-1980s, the company was the clear market leader in Austria.[3]
Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Mr. Essl faced the crumbling facades of the former Eastern Bloc countries and realized that he had found a huge new market for his building supplies. Already in 1992 the first stores were opened in the former Czechoslovakia