Billa Brand Guidelines: A 1953 Vienna Perfumery, the “Billiger Laden” and Rewe

A perfumery in Margareten and a new name in 1961.

Billa began as a perfume shop. In December 1953, German Wikipedia says, Karl Wlaschek opened a discount perfumery in Margareten, Vienna’s fifth district. English Wikipedia gives the shop’s first name as WKW, short for Warenhandel Karl Wlaschek, “Karl Wlaschek Trading.” More shops followed one by one, and by 1960 the business had 45 of them, both encyclopaedias say.

The range then moved from perfume to food. In 1961 the chain took the name Billa, a contraction of billiger Laden, German for “cheaper shop,” and turned to self-service. English Wikipedia counts 109 stores by 1965. German Wikipedia says Wlaschek ran much of the business himself, from buying stock to collecting the takings, until he began building a management team in 1967; a year later the company opened its first branch with more than 1,000 square metres of sales floor, with fresh counters for meat, fruit and vegetables.

The group grew around the Billa name. German Wikipedia says the Merkur chain joined in 1969, its first store opening in a former Billa branch, and that when the bookseller Libro started in 1978 a holding called BML was set up for Billa, Merkur and Libro. Other chains followed, among them Bipa, whose name stands for billige Parfümerie, “cheaper perfumery,” an echo of the first shop. In 1995 some 200 stores of the Konsum co-operative passed to Billa, German Wikipedia says.

Expansion abroad began around the opening of Central and Eastern Europe. German Wikipedia dates the move into Italy to 1990 and the first stores in Poland and in Brno, in what is now the Czech Republic, to 1991; English Wikipedia gives the Brno opening date as 26 October 1991. Slovakia and Hungary followed in 1993.

Corso, Stop & Shop, clever and Ja! Natürlich.

Billa sells under a family of formats rather than one shop type. German Wikipedia describes the standard Billa store as a neighbourhood supermarket and Billa Corso as the flagship with a wider delicatessen range; the first Corso opened in Vienna’s Ringstraßen-Galerien, a second followed in 2010 on the Neuer Markt, and since 2013 the Corso name has also appeared on an own-label range of specialities. From 2008 a partnership with the Jet filling-station chain brought Billa Stop & Shop counters into forecourt shops, and later shops at stations of other fuel brands carried names such as Billa Unterwegs. In 2021 a rural Billa Regional Box revived an earlier small-shop idea. On 8 September 2022 a branch called Billa Pflanzilla, selling no animal products, opened on Vienna’s Mariahilfer Straße, German Wikipedia says.

Own labels carry much of the identity on the shelf. German Wikipedia dates the first, O’Lacys, to 1991, the organic line Ja! Natürlich to 1994 and the entry label clever to 1999; a Billa Bio range and Billa immer gut, which took over the former Merkur own label, came later. The online shop opened in 1999.

The biggest change to the name came in 2021. On 28 January 2021 the Austrian broadcaster ORF reported that Rewe would retire the Merkur name, which dated to 1969 and then covered about 140 large supermarkets, and rename the stores Billa Plus. From April 2021, ORF reported, logos, shop fronts, carrier bags and staff clothing would be changed over, while the range and service of the larger stores were to stay. The office functions of the two chains had already been merged in 2020 into a joint unit based at Wiener Neudorf.

The look has kept changing country by country. In March 2024 the Czech trade site MediaGuru reported that Billa in the Czech Republic was dropping the red background with yellow lettering from its logo, which would now appear in yellow or white, and bringing a yellow-and-white scheme into stores, starting from a pilot shop at Říčany near Prague. Birch-coloured wood, new shelving, shop windows, trolleys and staff clothing were part of the change, and the agency McCann made the launch campaigns.

European supermarket and variety chains.

Europe’s supermarket, discount and variety chains show themselves first through the shop sign. A short name, a monogram or a block of colour has to work on a high-street fascia, a carrier bag, a trolley and a staff uniform at once. When Rewe renamed its Austrian Merkur stores Billa Plus in April 2021, the Austrian broadcaster ORF listed exactly those items — logos, shop fronts, bags and work clothing — as the things to be changed over. Albert Heijn’s lower-case “ah” monogram has been used since 1966.

Own-label packaging carries the identity onto the shelf. Chains name their ranges in their own words, from organic lines to entry labels and delicatessen ranges, and heritage archives such as the Stichting Albert Heijn Erfgoed foundation keep older packs that show how those labels looked decades ago. A change of colour or logo usually reaches packs, shelves, store interiors and campaigns in stages, as Billa’s yellow-and-white scheme did in the Czech Republic from 2024.

Formats and networks are part of the picture too. Many chains run several store types under one name — a neighbourhood supermarket, a larger flagship, a convenience shop at a station or filling station, and home delivery — and publish their store and country counts on their own corporate pages. Those counts change often, so this guide gives each one with the date of its source.

Ownership varies widely. Some chains still carry a founder’s name; others belong to listed retail groups, to family holdings or to co-operatives owned by their members or retailers, and several have been bought, merged or renamed over the decades. Corporate pages on founders, owners and retail groups set out those structures, and each guide here states them as dated facts, separating what independent sources record from what the companies say about themselves.

From a founder’s chain to a Rewe banner.

Ownership changed in 1996, when Wlaschek sold Billa to Germany’s Rewe Group; English Wikipedia says he sold his controlling interest, and German Wikipedia says the Libro book chain and the Billareal property business were left out of the sale. German Wikipedia describes today’s Billa AG, based at Wiener Neudorf south of Vienna, as an unlisted company wholly owned by Rewe International AG. Rewe International’s own website groups Billa with Billa Plus, Bipa, Penny, Adeg and IKI and says it trades in Austria and eight other European countries.

The map has also shrunk in places. German Wikipedia records the sale of the Polish stores to Auchan in 2001 and of the Hungarian stores to Spar Hungary, completed in autumn 2002. In summer 2014 the 136 Italian stores went to several buyers, among them Carrefour and Conad; the 86 Romanian stores passed to Carrefour in 2015–2016 and were rebadged between March and September 2017; and Spar Croatia took over 62 Croatian stores and a distribution centre on 15 December 2016. English Wikipedia says the Ukrainian chain, opened in Kyiv on 3 February 2000, was sold in September 2020 to the owner of the Novus chain, and that in May 2021 the Russian supermarkets, opened in Moscow in 2004, were sold to the retailer Lenta. In 2023 Billa left the Austrian state of Vorarlberg, handing its three Billa Plus stores to Sutterlüty from November 2023, German Wikipedia says.

Billa now trades in four countries, English Wikipedia says: Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, where it opened in 1993, and Bulgaria, entered in 2000. It counted 1,069 Austrian stores as of March 2019, and 173 Bulgarian supermarkets in 54 cities as of April 2026.

For a design guide, Billa shows how a plain descriptive shop name can grow into a family of formats, labels and sub-brands, and how one owner can merge two chains under a single word. Compare SPAR, whose Croatian arm took over Billa stores in 2016, and Carrefour, which bought them in Italy and Romania. For this guide we use a warm yellow, a brick red and a pale birch tone with a rounded sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Billa’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.