The traditional company Palmers (515 employees, 113 branches) is in the deepest crisis in its company history. A renovation process with self -administration was opened last Friday. The debt mountain (69.19 million euros) is higher than sales (66.6 million euros). Now a new investor is to finance the renovation and bring the company back on the road to success. It is unclear whether the old owners remain on board or hand over their shares in the new potential investor.
Nine years ago, the three brothers Marc, Tino and Luca Wieser got on with an investor group around the former Red Bull manager Gernot Friedhuber near Palmers. Today, the P Tex Holding laundry company, half of which belongs half of Luca and Tino Wieser as well as the Liechtensteiner CFA Contact Finance and Handels AG of the Hutman family.
Im services Benettons
The Wieser brothers are grandchildren of the tailor Josef and Friederike Knilli, who led a fashion house of the same name in Graz. With the grandparents, the offspring have had their first experiences with the textile business. In the first three years, Marc Wieser, now 52, had the helm at Palmers. He previously went through a particularly hard school. He was a personal assistant to the Italian fashion designer Luciano Benetton in Veneto for twelve years.
“I had a total of three weeks of vacation with Benetton in my first twelve years,” Marc Wieser told the courier years ago. “Luciano Benetton drove me, but he also supported me and I learned a lot from him.” Afterwards Wieser led Benetton-Megastores in Graz, Vösendorf and Vienna for around 15 years. He actually wanted to acquire Palmers with Benetton in 2003, but did not get the train at the time. Almost three years after the takeover of Palmers, Marc Wieser “retired from the operational management of the company for private reasons,” it said in a broadcast.
The financial specialist
Tino Wieser was also in the Palmers management from the end of 2015, today 51. He is considered the financial specialist among the brothers. He worked in textile trade for years, among others for Benetton, Nike and Sisley; From 2001 to 2013 as a franchisee for Benetton Megastores. Then the brothers switched to the consultant business. Years ago, Tino Wieser told the standard that his parents went bankrupt.
Tino Wieser was sitting in the Palmers management until the beginning of February 2024 and then retired to the owner role in the P Tex Holding.
Likewise the youngest of the three Wieser brothers, 42-year-old Luca Matteo. He was a consultant for his brothers for seven years when the Benetton Megastores in Germany operated. Afterwards he worked in an investment bank for five and a half years and for a year he was employed by Red Bull in the area of Mergers & Acquisitions. At the beginning of February 2024, he left the Palmers Textil AG board and is now the managing director of P Tex Holding.
The Immo investor
As another manager at Palmers on board, Matvei Hutman, 49, namely from December 2016 to February 2024. The Hutman family is 50 percent by Palmers via the Liechtensteiner CFA Contact Finance and Handels AG. Matvei Hutman is, among other things, managing partner of the real estate developer Valetono Development GmbH.
Whether a new investor will get in the first place of creditor on March 4.