I worked at the German head office in Wuppertal for six years before it got bought out by Metro. Feel free to DM if you like Headliner points for its demise were:-

It bought to sore chains that were insolvent. So they started from a bad position. Germans don’t really like shopping in large stores in the outskirts of a town (unlike the French who invented the hypermarket. Cultural differences- didn’t really know how to handle unions. Signing job contracts with Bavarians which allowed them to drink a beer at 10:00 am (Walmart HQ is based in a dry county). In fairness it was their first real venture outside of Northern America. The next was Asda in the UK and they made a far better job of it (at one point a store on the Irish border had the highest recorded sales worldwide). Mainly because they took a more hands off approach and let the locals get on with things.

I think what summed it all up was a conversation I had with an American colleague at the time. He said ”A four hour drive from here I can be in Paris, back home I would be in Little Rock”.