Prague's enterstore buys Dutch brand Joe Merino, 8th acquisition

Prague-based e-commerce group enterstore has acquired 80% of the Dutch company Joemerino B.V., owner of a premium menswear brand made from merino wool. The deal expands the Prague group's portfolio to eight brands and opens up a new segment for it — premium fashion.

The Joe Merino brand was founded in Amsterdam in 2011 by Ron Beckers. He started with a single V-neck sweater in six colours, and today the company offers more than fifty styles in over sixty shades of merino wool, sourced mainly from Australia and New Zealand. The brand's revenue exceeds €15 million, or roughly 360 million crowns.

The company sells mostly direct-to-consumer online, but it also runs three physical stores — in Amsterdam, Antwerp and Düsseldorf — which remain its key markets. At the same time, the brand has customers in more than forty countries worldwide, and around 70% of buyers come back for repeat purchases.

From the very start, Joe Merino built its business against the market's usual rules: no discounts or sales, no seasonal collections, no selling through wholesalers or marketplaces.

"Ron and his team have patiently built this brand on their own terms. Our job is to support them with e-commerce expertise, purchasing power and the international infrastructure of the whole group, so that more men across Europe discover Joe Merino," said enterstore's chief executive Elisabeth Sandström.

Beckers himself remains with the company as a shareholder. "Finding a partner who understands this was more important to me than anything else," he said of the sale of his stake.

Prague's enterstore, backed by the investment group Hartenberg Holding, which manages the assets of Andrej Babiš, already owns the brands Astratex, Sportega, Ovečkárna, Unuo, Miss Mary, Kinderkraft and Čisté Dřevo. The group's net revenue exceeds €300 million — about 7.225 billion crowns — with its active customer base reaching 4.5 million people in fifty countries.

By the Around Prague newsroom