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Comment by werber | Hacker News Reader

Has any foreign chain been able to really take off in Germany?

Fashion chains, plenty of them. H&M, Zara, etc.

TJ Maxx operates in Germany under the name TK Maxx for some reason.

As some have mentioned, yes. But in general: Why must someone push his brand and store concept into another country, instead of buying/creating a local chain?

How often will grocery-buying customers from one country be shopping groceries while on vacation? And would a recognizable brand really leave the customer with an advantage? E.g.: If I were an American in Germany, yearning for Twinkies, which are nowhere to be found in regular stores in Germany, would I or Walmart be really better off, by also-not-finding-them in the German Walmart too?

> Why must someone push his brand and store concept into another country, instead of buying/creating a local chain?

Exactly because they want to do it their way

It's not about foreign people, it's about a different way of doing stuff

Walmart may be bad for groceries, but it sells a lot of other stuff, which is an area Aldi/Lidl doesn't touch

Lidl sells plenty of stuff other than groceries, with anything from clothing to telescopes, they just don't stock them permanently.

But when they do, sometimes they even beat direct-from-China pricing, by up to a 60%. Which is pretty impressive if you were to ask me.

You're right about this aspect of Lidl

But they pretty much don't guarantee availability of anything, it's what's on the shelves (at least on the smaller ones)

I guess they beat direct-from-China price by volume and cheaper freight

Fast food chains

One of the two netto chains is Danish. It's only active in some parts of Germany though.

Ah, the cute dog Netto, always a nice surprise when you come to the north from the south. And not half as weird as seeing wrong-colored Aldis ;)

I even checked all of the ones I could think of on Wikipedia, and no, I didn't find any. Interesting indeed.

IKEA.

True, but I think werber was referring to grocery stores (or the like).

But that's hardly something unique to Germany then. Off the top of my head, the Netherlands, France, Belgium, Spain, UK, Germany, Denmark, and Finland all have their own set of national grocery store chains, with only very little cross-border movement (Aldi and Lidl are the big exceptions).

Poland seems exceptional in this regard - there are local chains here, but they are heavily outmassed by foreign brands, ranging from German LIDL, through Portuguese Jeronimo Martins to French and British franchises. That's probably because of a skewed tax policy favouring foreign companies over locals, which I have a hard time understanding.

SPAR is the other exception.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spar_(retailer)

Perhaps the other exception is Carrefour

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