Household goods chain Blokker is up for sale and needs new money to keep it afloat, the Financieele Dagblad reported on Thursday.

The company has been loss making since 2014 and booked a gross loss of €2 million last year, the FD said. It has some 400 high street outlets and a workforce of 4,000.

“We are doing all we can to ensure Blokker’s continuation,” Mirage’s chief executive Ynse Stapert told the paper. ‘We are busy with the financing and looking at all the options.”

Blokker has been hit by high inflation, rising wages and competition from new arrivals such as budget chain Action and online stores such as Bol and Coolblue. The company, which dates back over 100 years, also has a coronavirus tax debt of €28 million.

The Blokker family sold the Blokker group five years ago to its then chief executive officer Michiel Witteveen. He took over the heavily loss-making parent company Blokker Holding – later renamed Mirage – which at the time also included the Big Bazar and Xenos formulas.

Blokker Belgium went bankrupt at the end of 2020, less than a year after Mirage sold it to entrepreneur Dirk Bron. In September, bargain chain Big Bazar went out of business, two years after being sold by Mirage. Electronics chain BCC, part of Mirage since 2020, collapsed in the same month.

Mirage acquired the toy chain Intertoys in 2019, which posted gross operating profit (ebitda) of around €12 million on sales of €208 million last year, the FD said.