FLENSBURG, Germany — An investment firm that infused European adult retail chain Beate Uhse AG with funding in January to help stave off shutting down has emerged as its new operator.
Beate Uhse, which filed for insolvency (equivalent to Chapter 11 in the U.S.) last year, now has plans to restructure and rebrand, according to WirtschaftsWoche.
According to the insolvency plan, viable parts of the company will be transferred to a new company. That company will be called “Be You.”
Beate Uhse creditors, including those who invested in a €30 million bond issued in July 2014, are likely to lose most of their money.
“If all goes to plan, then Robus Capital will take over the recoverable elements of the company at the beginning of May,” Beate Uhse’s bankruptcy attorney Georg Bernsau told WirtschaftsWoche.
The company, which sells lingerie, sex toys and DVDs in Germany and The Netherlands, plans on keeping its marketing division in Germany and attempt to increase sales efforts through third-party online sites.
The adult retailer was founded in 1946 by former Luftwaffe Pilot Beate Rotermund-Uhse who opened the world’s first sex shop in Flensburg in 1962.
Revenue has been on a long slide for more than a decade for the Flensburg, Germany-based company, which grew to 300 stores with sales peaking at €285 million in 2005.
Ten years later, in 2015, Beate Uhse, found revenue totaling less than half that figure at €129 million.
Pictured: Beate Uhse CEO Michael Specht
