[3] In 1958 Karlheinz Essl Sr., son of a food wholesaler from Carinthia, went to the City of New York to study the principle of self-service stores of American supermarkets.

[3] Immediately after the fall of the Iron Curtain, Mr. Essl faced the crumbling facades of the former Eastern Bloc countries and realized that he had found a huge new market for his building supplies.

According to these papers, the Baumax Group had more than one billion euros of debt, one out of three stores generated a net loss, often without any chance of significant improvement.

The papers stated an "unclear target group orientation with an uncoordinated price and assortment policy" that had developed due to "deficiencies inside the management organization."

[3] However, after another huge loss in the fiscal year of 2013, the Essl family had to withdraw from office[4] and Baumax fell to the creditor banks, who finally decided to break up the company.

[3] By the end of August 2015 it was announced that the German DIY chain Obi would take over 70 Baumax stores (of which 49 are located in Austria, 14 in Slovakia, two in Slovenia and five in the Czech Republic) for nearly €200 million.