Acquisition of Babymarkt by Baby Walz: How That Changes Market Dynamics

News in the baby eCommerce landscape in Germany: Market leaders Babymarkt and Baby-Walz are going to merge. Specifically, Versandhaus Walz, which is Baby-Walz’s parent company, is going to acquire Babymarkt from Tengelmann Ventures.

Babymarkt has been a multi-channel store chain under the control of Tengelmann since the 2010s. With the current restructuring moves, Babymarkt is going to continue as a pure online brand with the domain babymarkt.com. There have been a few problems and financial mishaps that brought Babymarkt to the brink of insolvency earlier this year.

The acquisition is subject to federal approval after antitrust review. Assuming the deal goes through, how will it change the industry landscape?

Two Leaders Merging in a Competitive Environment

Using the ECDB Online Store Ranking, we have identified the top 5 online stores in Germany that specialize in the sale of baby products.

Babymarkt and Baby-Walz are the two leading stores in this segment, although the former is struggling: An unprofitable store does not necessarily mean that net sales are low, only that costs exceed revenues.

This appears to be the case with Babymarkt. The market environment is highly competitive, with many players striving for market dominance. This includes not only the baby product specialists, but also generalist retailers such as Amazon, to which customers tend to turn for almost all their purchases.

Three of the top five baby specialty retailers in Germany are in a place of solid growth with around 5% and low net sales. This is the case for babyone.de (US$51.8 million net sales in 2024 and 6.4% growth), babyartikel.de (US$50.4 million net sales and 3.7% growth), and vertbaudet.de (US$59.3 million net sales and 2.3% growth).

Baby-walz.de showed less growth with higher net sales, but can be placed in a similar range with US$95.0 million and 1.4% growth. Babymarkt’s struggles, however, are evident: Although it generated US$110.0 million in 2024, its degrowth has been immense at -13.6%, mainly owed to recent restructuring.

Closing the Deal: What It Means for the Baby Market

Although the acquisition has not yet been finalized, it is expected to go through. Antitrust authorities are investigating a potential monopoly as the merging parties are two of the largest players in the field.

Babymarkt is set to continue as an own brand but with a greatly reduced number of domains. Where it previously operated several domains (including babymarkt.de, baby-markt.at, roseoubleu.fr, pinkorblue.it, pinkorblue.pl, and others), babymarkt.com is going to continue as the sole domain for Europe.

Baby-walz.de and babymarkt.com are going to continue to exist as separate domains, but net sales after the merger will all be included in the now common parent company, Versandhaus Walz.

Therefore, we have illustrated the new partnership as a range of net revenues that both domains now contribute together as subsidiaries. We estimate that babymarkt.com and baby-walz.de are jointly going to accumulate a range of US$200 and US$220 after the merger, based on the numbers for 2024. For 2025, an increase in mutual revenues encompassing a range of 3%-5% is expected.

In a Market Where Amazon Takes It All, Mergers Provide a Safety Buffer

What this ultimately means is that the acquisition is going to place Versandhaus Walz at the top of the list of baby specialty retailers. Together, the two former leaders have a significant head start over specialized competitors.

Essentially, the market dominance of retailers with “a little bit of everything”, including baby products, is hurting margins of the specialized players. This applies to leaders like Amazon, but also emerging platforms like Temu.