Finland's Stockmann to close Oulu department store

By

Cajsa Lykke Carlson

Published
Apr 15, 2015

Stockmann, the Finnish department store company, has announced the first steps in its efficiency programme, which was launched in February 2015. The company will be closing down its Oulu department store, as negotiations for a new lease agreement were unsuccessful.

All employees, around 230 people, will be affected by the closure that will take place in early 2017 at the latest.

Stockmann is also going ahead with earlier announced plans to close three loss-making department stores in the Mega shopping centres in Moscow by the end of 2016. This will affect around 700 people.

The company is also restructuring its support functions in Finland and Russia to improve efficiency, with a significant part of cost savings to be reached through personnel reductions. This could affect up to 420 people in support functions in Finland and Russia during 2015 and 2016.

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"Stockmann’s support functions in Finland and in Russia are today designed to serve a larger scale of operations and growth strategies. As we are focusing on our core businesses, we plan to restructure the support functions to better reflect the Group's new strategy and the current economic situation," says CEO Per Thelin. "The planned reductions are regrettable but necessary in order to bring Stockmann back to profit. It is our goal to make the changes in a fair and responsible way for our employees."

Stockmann said that it will negotiate about the planned changes with employee representatives in accordance with country-specific legal requirements.