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Germany's largest department store chain began a strategic restart in 2021. Der Spiegel reported in August that Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof would trade as Galeria with a new logo, first used officially at showcase stores opening on 27 October, with the traditional Karstadt and Kaufhof names disappearing step by step as stores were refitted. The logo, Spiegel said, is a small g surrounded by three semicircles with GALERIA in capitals.

Chief executive Miguel Müllenbach explained the motive in a letter to staff quoted by Spiegel: Karstadt and Kaufhof were now one company, the new logo should show it, and the reorientation as Galeria 2.0 should be visible with confidence. The rebrand sat within a plan to spend around 600 million euros over three to four years, 400 million of it on modernising 131 stores, which would be sorted into three formats: world city stores, regional magnets and local forums, with Frankfurt, Kassel and Kleve as pilots.

Marketing chief Alexa Deters gave TextilWirtschaft the brand view. The logo expresses a positioning combining aspiration, taste and value; people see a flower, a cloud and above all a small g. Crucially, she said, it leaves the past of the Karstadt and Kaufhof brands behind without forgetting the roots. She credited KW43, the brand experience specialist of the Grey group, with developing it, alongside a first in house image language shot in Hamburg. She also defended the loss of two famous names: the online shop had already moved from karstadt.de to galeria.de in 2018, only 2 per cent of customers used the full combined name, and market research showed the new brand made a clearly more positive impression. TextilWirtschaft noted that some experts had already criticised the logo.

Merging names after a merger is overdue housekeeping, and Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof was a mouthful nobody used. The mark itself is soft and decorative, more boutique than department store, which suits a chain trying to look premium. The problem is that a logo cannot fix the conditions that forced the restart, and the old names carried a century of civic memory. Galeria now has to give the new one comparable meaning, store by refurbished store.