Gerry Weber

Part of the Portfolio since 2015.

Gerry Weber was, for decades, a comfortable German success: a women’s-fashion house from Halle in Westphalia, founded by Gerhard Weber and Udo Hardieck, its labels (Gerry Weber, Taifun, Samoon) a fixture of the European high street and its shares a respectable mid-cap. Then it discovered, in sequence, every classic way for a retailer to destroy itself.

First, the universal retail sin: over-expansion of its own store estate. A wholesale brand that had prospered selling through other people’s shops decided to become a retailer itself, opening far too many of its own outlets and signing far too many leases, just as physical fashion retail entered its long decline.

Second, the museum’s favourite detail: a fantastically over-engineered new automated central logistics centre whose costs ran spectacularly out of control. There is a recurring pattern among doomed retailers – a love affair with a gleaming, too-clever warehouse, conceived in good times and delivered into bad ones. Gerry Weber built a cathedral to logistics it could not afford to fill.

Third, the quiet killer: the collections simply stopped exciting anyone. When the product loses its pull, the over-built store estate and the gold-plated warehouse stop being assets and become a fixed-cost trap with a fashion problem on top.

In January 2019 the company filed for insolvency in self-administration (the German ‘protective shield’). 146 stores were shut; the creditors – Robus Capital, Whitebox and J.P. Morgan – injected up to €49 million and took 100% of the equity, leaving the founding families with nothing. The subsidiary Hallhuber, separately, soon needed its own protective-shield rescue.

And then it happened again. By 2023 the company had to restructure a second time, closing another 122 stores and, in the financial part of the plan, cutting the share capital to zero – wiping out the remaining public shareholders entirely and extinguishing the Frankfurt listing on 4 December 2023. For those keeping score, the company then slid into insolvency yet again in 2025. Three strikes, and the museum had to label the exhibit in pencil to leave room for updates.