Health food retailer Müller Reformhaus Vital Shop will close down 37 stores, employing 298 staff in Switzerland, amid poor trading conditions and mounting debt.
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Rede de lojas de alimentação saudável entra em falência
The retail chain, founded in 1929, said on Tuesday that it never fully recovered from the coronavirus pandemic and faces increasing competition from digital competitors.
Sales wilted in the second year of the pandemic in 2021 and continued to fall last year. Efforts to dig the group out of trouble with strategic partnerships failed to reverse the tide.
The pandemic accelerated e-commerce trends and the group was unable to cope with the growing phenomenon of working from home.
“Every day our employees were confronted with the statement that our offer was too expensive,” the group stated. “On the other hand, for economic reasons we were not able to improve the employment conditions of our workforce in the long term.”
Müller is Switzerland’s largest high street health foods retailer with its branches concentrated in German-speaking Switzerland and in canton Ticino near to the Italian border.
The company’s last day of trading is on January 3 before it goes into liquidation.
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