The world's insatiable demand for health & beauty products has made a number of drugstore owners seriously rich. These include Stefano Pessina, CEO of Chicago-based Walgreens Boots Alliance (WBA), and Li Ka-shing, Chairman of Hong Kong conglomerate CK Hutchison Holdings and retail subsidiary A.S. Watson. Both are the largest shareholders in their respective companies and personal billionaires.Götz Werner, Dirk Roßmann and Erwin Müller, the founders of leading German drugstore chains dm, Rossmann and Müller, also rank among the planet's wealthy. But their thriving businesses hardly extend beyond Europe and cannot match the US and Chinese giant in annual sales, store count or global reach. Put in health & beauty terms, they are provincial European belles in a Miss World contest.

For a country with just 1 per cent of the world's population Germany's retailers aren't doing a bad job at selling their wares on the global marketplace. LZ Retailytics data show that eleven retail groups posted record gross revenues totalling €190bn last year in 41 foreign countries on four continents. This whopping sum is around three-and-a-half times more than leading grocer Edeka achieves on its home market.German retailers began their international expansion in the late 1960's and have been gaining momentum ever since. The principal pioneers were Metro Cash & Carry and hard discounters Aldi and Lidl. But who else is conquering the world from Frisco to Sydney?

After years of probing Planet Food Retail, Amazon's flying saucer has finally landed at Whole Foods headquarters in Austin/Texas.The traveller from deepest cyberspace must be serious, otherwise it wouldn't be offering $13.7bn for the privilege of buying the largest organic food retailer in the United States.The thing about flying saucers, of course, is that they can go wherever they want. So how about Germany and Old Europe, dear aliens?

Do you have a passion for fashion? Are you an industry professional keen on following the international fashion business? Want a daily update, but fed up with the flood of unfiltered information in your email in-box? Then subscribe to our free daily English-language newsletter: THE SPIN.The trick, of course, is in the curation, and that's where our publishing company has two trump cards in its hands. Want to know more, before you hit the subscription button and join a trendy international community?

Not to be outdone by fellow discounter Aldi and Jette Joop, the US subsidiary of Lidl has joined forces with German supermodel Heidi Klum in a new fashion campaign. Lidl US announced today its first ever collaboration with the international fashion icon and designer. Heidi's new collection, which mirrors her characteristic style, will be available exclusively at Lidl and will launch across its network of stores later this year.With her vast expertise and success in the fashion industry, Heidi Klum has carefully designed a high-end, yet affordable fashion collection for Lidl, making the range accessible for everyone. Lidl's customers across Europe and the USA can look forward to seeing Heidi's exclusive collection launch later this year.Klum commented: "Lidl is known for making quality products at affordable prices, and I'm proud to partner with them on this fashion collaboration. I had so much fun designing the pieces in this collection and can't wait for you to see it." Well, neither can we, Heidi...

Only days after Premier Xi Jinping announced his party's $900bn 'Belt and Road' initiative, Lidl is nearing completion of an online shop in the People's Republic. Like arch-rival Aldi, the German discount giant has chosen Alibaba's Tmall Global as its B2C platform.Although even the soft launch won't be until the end of May, the site can already be seen under https://lidl.tmall.hk/. Customers will initially be able to choose from around 60 food lines. These dry goods include breakfast products, such as Maribel raspberry jam or Crownfield granola, as well as pasta and cooking ingredients such as Balsamic vinegar.The offer is essentially own label. Unlike Aldi, who imports from Australia, Lidl is sourcing directly from Germany via its buying subsidiary in Hong Kong. So what else is new?

When in Hollywood movies the bad guy asks the action hero's name, the cult answer is: "Your worst nightmare." As from today, German food retailers will at least find out whether Amazon Fresh is a game changer.They have certainly long been in denial. In a relentless hunt for sales, without even a cursory glance at the return on invested capital, local bricks & mortar retailers still can't build enough physical stores. This inexorable process has continued, regardless of how late such stores may be in their life cycle; regardless of the fact that Germany is already overstored by at least a third; and regardless of the growing consumer trend towards internet shopping.For years would-be pundits have comforted themselves by saying that the German market is so dominated by hard discounters that no online food retailer could ever make a profit here. For those readers who are not quite so sure, it might be worth looking at what Amazon has just begun in parts of Berlin and Potsdam.

It was a good year in the making, but well worth the wait: Today we are proud to announce the launch of our new retail data analysis platform, LZ Retailytics.As the strapline 'Smart Intelligence for Grocery Retail in Europe' implies, its mission is to provide the food retail industry and its business partners with insight, analysis and forecast data to support their business in Europe. This English-language digital and mobile platform will also deliver workshops, training courses and projects.LZ Retailytics tracks and analyses the business development of more than 1,000 grocery retail banners in 40 European countries. Want to know more?

It was some Grand Opening in Shanghai this Tuesday. Five weeks after the soft launch, Aldi Süd (Aldi South), Germany's most profitable discounter, officially presented its new online shop to the People's Republic of China. No pains or expense were spared for the official ceremony at the Waterhouse in Shanghai.The gentle-voiced and incredibly popular, local singer Chen Kun had been recruited for the occasion. Perhaps a little incongruously for a retailer whose initial offer only includes 100 own-label food lines, the audience were also treated to a fashion show where young ladies with willowy bodies strutted their stuff on the catwalk.Of course, it could all have been just a glamour item, but perhaps the privately-run retail giant is hinting at introducing its successful fashion collection to the Middle Kingdom?At any event, when one considers that Aldi has opened an office with 40 staff in the centre of Shanghai and a big distribution centre in the port of Ningbo, its cooperation with Alibaba B2C platform Tmall Global looks far more than a toe-dipping exercise in the South China Sea.And as journalists we can only exult because the low-profile retailer authorised country manager Christoph Schwaiger to talk with Lebensmittel Zeitung.

Mamma mia! Fruitbook Magazine has actually flown over Aldi's first distribution centre in Italy and shot some photos. The site in Oppeano, 20km from the centre of Verona, is still under construction. But, as the picture taken in mid-February below shows, the German discount giant is well on the way to setting up shop in Venetia.One real estate developer tells us that Aldi is already searching for another DC of around 60,000m² to the south of Milan. Luigi Rubinelli, managing editor of RetailWatch, believes this could be in the vicinity of Piacenza. He also says that Aldi has just signed the lease on a first store in Merano.True to form, Hofer, Aldi South's Austrian subsidiary responsible for group expansion in bella Italia, remains tight-lipped. This gives free rein to speculation on how big the company wants to become south of the Alps. So what have we been able to piece together for our readers so far?