The owner of the famous Playmobil plastic figures announced this Monday the elimination of 17% of its workforce, almost half of them in Germany, in a context of erosion of its sales around the world. “We announced a comprehensive restructuring plan, which involves the elimination of 694 jobs worldwide until 2025. 369 of them are in Germany,” said the German group Horst Brandstätter, owner of the brand.
This corresponds to “17% of the world’s active population and 16% in Germany,” the press release states. The group cites “current economic challenges” and the “global recession” caused “by the coronavirus pandemic,” which has caused disruptions to supply chains, from which it says it has yet to recover.
Disruptions to international supply chains have led to shortages and increased production costs, which have been worsened by the war in Ukraine. The Horst Brandstätter group, named after its founder, who died in 2015, has suffered “significant drops in profits in the last two years,” the company adds. During the staggered fiscal year March 2021-March 2022 (latest figures available), the group’s turnover fell by 2.8% to 736 million euros, while that of the Playmobil activity fell by 4.3%.
Competence
Supply issues led some retailers to initially inflate their orders to ensure they had enough toys on shelves. But between the economic slowdown and inflation, sales were not as good as expected and order intake at Playmobil fell. Added to this are the governance difficulties for the Bavarian group, which led to the resignation in July of its president Steffen Höpfner, replaced by the former financial director of Playmobil René Feser, according to the German press.
The group, based in the small Bavarian town of Zirndorf (south), also suffers from competition from its main rivals, the Danish Lego, number one in the world in toys, and the American Mattel, which benefits from the dazzling success of Barbie. . movie. With this restructuring, Horst Brandstätter claims to “guarantee” the rest of the jobs in Germany and Europe.
Playmobil figures are mainly produced in the German factory in Dietenhofen, near Nuremberg (south), the traditional toy capital. The articulated little man is almost 50 years old. Patriarch Horst Brandstätter promoted its creation during the oil crisis of the 1970s, which caused plastic prices to skyrocket.
To ensure the continuity of the family toy business, which had existed since 1908, he had asked a mold designer to invent a game system that required a minimum of raw materials. Presented to the public in 1974, the 7.5 centimeter figure was born.
Source: BFM TV
