Giannoukas Group: From the Greek IKEA project with Planet Home, to the fall and the auction

of Matina Harkoftaki

It was at the end of 2006 when the first Planet Home store opened in an area of ​​7,000 sq.m. in Moschato, marking the entry of the Giannoulas group in the retail sector.

A move, which the then head of the company Konstantinos Giannoulas characterized at that time as a natural evolution and continuation of the group’s activities, which had started as early as the 1970s, starting with the import of seasonal items from Europe.

In the early 1990s, it began to focus on Asian markets, moving to the first imports of home appliances and seasonal items.

The expansion, however, was not limited there, as the group acquired privately owned production lines in Turkey and Indonesia, a move that gradually transformed it into one of the largest suppliers of well-known DIY chains, including Praktiker, Alex Pak and Makro. .

The group’s many years of experience in the field of import and marketing of home equipment played a catalytic role in taking the next step through the creation of its own store network, Planet Home with the starting point of the first store in Moschato, an investment, which reached the 12 million euros according to the administration of Giannoula.

This was followed by the opening of three more stores as well as the expansion in Thessaloniki, while the chain’s plans included opening to markets outside Greece as well as development through the franchise model. The goal was for Planet Home to compete on an equal footing with the foreign chains of the industry, while there were not a few who had characterized them as the “Greek IKEA”.

Despite the good performance they recorded, the advent of the financial crisis in our country, which caused a strong blow to the domestic retail in combination with the large opening of the company from the investment in Thessaloniki in 2008, led the Greek chain on a slippery slope with ending the padlocks and the inclusion of the group in 2010 in Article 99 of the Bankruptcy Code.

The group, which had given importance to infrastructure from the beginning, had created a logistics center in Mandra, Attica, which had in fact preceded its entry into retail and the operation of the first Planet Home store in Moschato.

The property in question, which belonged to one of the group’s subsidiaries, Giannoulas Logistics (with the distinctive title HARCO), will be put up for auction on July 21 with the first offer price set at 2.51 million euros, while the accelerator is dovalue Greece.

The auction concerns a plot of land with a total area of ​​17 acres, located on Tsoka Street in Mandra, Attica, in which building facilities with a total area of ​​four acres have been erected.

It should be noted that the company Ch. Giannoulas remains active to this day in contrast to Giannoulas Logistics, for which a solution request was submitted in 2018 and is under the status of liquidation.