Reno Brand Guidelines: The 1977 Pirmasens Shoe Chain Kienast Put Over 250 Doors

Two founders, Metro, and a shoe group in Osnabrück.

Reno was founded in 1977 in Pirmasens, in the Palatinate, by Franco Prosser and Dieter Götz, German Wikipedia says. Before 2000 the two founders withdrew and sold the chain to the retail group Metro. Metro restructured Reno, which then had around 850 stores according to German Wikipedia, moved it together with Deutsche Bank into the investment company Divaco, and in 2000 sold it to the Osnabrück shoe retailer Hamm and to a former Metro manager who had sat on Divaco’s board. WirtschaftsWoche confirmed in 2022 that Reno had belonged to the Osnabrück shoe group since 2000.

From Osnabrück the chain was run alongside the Hamm business. In 2001 the owners set up a logistics company and a central buying company, HR Footwear Sourcing, and in 2005 the Hamm and Reno groups pooled their activities as the HR Group, German Wikipedia says. The operating company behind the stores was Reno Schuhcentrum GmbH, the name WirtschaftsWoche used in 2023. Reno opened its own online shop in April 2010, and from 2011 it was one of the main sponsors of the Windsurf World Cup on Sylt.

Ownership shifted again in 2016. Until the end of March that year the HR Group was held half each by the former Metro manager and the Hamm family; in April 2016 the Berlin investment company Capiton took a majority, with smaller stakes going to a former retail executive and to the Ziylan Grup, German Wikipedia says. In 2019 the group bought CCC Deutschland GmbH outright, and the Polish shoe retailer CCC took a stake in the HR Group in return.

For children the chain created its own characters. From 2006 Reno advertised its children’s shoes with Ricky and Kuno, two fictional figures who appeared in a comic titled Der sprechende Superschuh (“The Talking Super Shoe”), in two television spots and on three audio CDs. German Wikipedia compares them with Salamander’s Lurchi and says Reno had parted with them by 2011 at the latest.

A sale, an insolvency and a new owner.

In late September 2022 the management and shareholders of the HR Group decided to sell Reno, with its stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and its online shop, and to concentrate on the group’s system business and its logistics arm, WirtschaftsWoche reported on 30 September 2022. The buyers were the retail group cm.sports, backed by the Hannover company CM Solutions, and its partner GA Europe. The stores were to keep the Reno name, and the new owners said they would position Reno as a “real alternative for clever shopping,” with a mix of retailers’ and own brands aimed at the whole family, the magazine reported.

The arrangement did not last. On 28 March 2023, six months after the change of owner, the local court in Hameln ordered provisional insolvency proceedings for Reno Schuhcentrum GmbH, WirtschaftsWoche reported the next day; the chain then had around 180 stores. Two weeks later the HR Group filed for insolvency for nine of its German companies, German Wikipedia says. The Austrian business followed, and on 30 April 2023 the Swiss broadcaster SRF reported that Reno had also filed for insolvency in Switzerland, where it had 16 stores, after a search for an investor had not succeeded.

A buyer took part of the business. In June 2023 the Kienast Unternehmensgruppe, a shoe retailer based in the Wedemark near Hannover, took over around 30 stores in Germany and the rights to the Reno brand, German Wikipedia says. Kienast itself said it had agreed to take over nine Reno stores within the insolvency process and had gained about 21 further sites outside it, and that it would keep running the Reno stores under the familiar name with their existing staff. Kienast had already taken over the Shoe4You chain in 2016 and Schuhpark in 2019, the company says.

The rest of the old chain closed. The remaining German stores, around 150, and the stores in Austria and Switzerland were shut during 2023, according to German Wikipedia. The Reno chain as it was run from Osnabrück therefore no longer trades; what continues is the name, under a new owner.

Shoe chains and their signs.

Shoe store chains in Europe present themselves first through the shop sign. The name over the door, its lettering and its colours are what a shopper sees from a car park or a high street, and the same mark is repeated on carrier bags, loyalty apps and websites. When a chain changes hands or merges its banners, the sign can change with it: in 2024 the German group Kienast announced that it would rename around 250 of its shops under the Reno name, replacing the logo lettering inside and outside each store, as the company and the trade title Shoez reported.

The chains in this guide come from Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Poland, France and the United Kingdom, and they trade in different formats. As the companies describe them, these run from large shoe centres on retail parks and the edges of towns to smaller units on high streets and in shopping centres, and most now add an online shop and often an app.

Ownership varies as much as format. Some chains are still run by founding families, some are listed on a stock exchange, and some belong to larger shoe-retail groups that run several banners side by side, each with its own sign and its own own-label ranges. Ownership can also change quickly: Reno was sold by its long-time owner in 2022, entered insolvency proceedings in March 2023 and now continues as a brand of the Kienast group, according to WirtschaftsWoche and the company itself.

Each guide sets out what can be checked about one chain: when and where it was founded, who owns it today, how it describes its shops and its own-label ranges, and what its corporate pages say about founders and owners. Where a fact rests only on a company’s own word, the guide says so. The palettes and type pairings are our own unofficial interpretations; no logo or shop sign is reproduced.

A bought name over around 250 doors.

Kienast then made Reno its main shop name. Between August and October 2024 it planned to switch around 250 of its stores, until then trading as ABC Schuh-Center and K+K Schuh-Center, to the Reno name, the company announced and the trade title Shoez reported on 6 June 2024; German Wikipedia puts the number at around 230. Kienast said it chose the name to build on the reputation and recognition Reno already had in Germany. Its other banners, Shoe4You, Schuhpark and street shoes, were left unchanged.

The switch was handled as a design programme as much as a change of sign. Kienast said the stores would be converted cluster by cluster across Germany, several within a single week, with all logo lettering inside and outside replaced, new entrance and checkout areas, foil on the doors and new printed material for a consistent brand presence. The accompanying campaign ran under the pun “RENOvierung”, a play on the German word for renovation, aimed at existing customers, new ones and lapsed ones. The German Brand Award gallery lists the project, “Rebranding RENO (Kienast Unternehmensgruppe)”, as a winner in Excellence in Brand Strategy and Creation, Brand Design – Corporate Brand, with the agency ZUM HOHEN UFER credited for the design; German Wikipedia dates the award to 2025.

Today the website writes the name in capitals and calls RENO “a brand of the Kienast Unternehmensgruppe.” It runs a RENO app with coupons and points, shows ranges from labels such as Tom Tailor and superfit, and offers a free Pixi picture book, Lotta, Henri und die Superschuhe, with each pair of children’s shoes bought in its stores while stocks last. Shoez reported in 2024 that the Kienast group had more than 450 stores, a company figure.

For a design guide, Reno shows how a shop name can outlast the company that built it: a name founded in 1977 was bought out of insolvency in 2023 and then put over the doors of another group’s stores, with a new set of signs, entrances and print. Compare CCC, the Polish chain once tied to Reno’s former owner, and Dosenbach, a Swiss shoe chain. For this guide we use a brick red, a pale stone and a warm charcoal with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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