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Downtown Essen
Photo: Rupert Oberhäuser / imago images
A dress form with a scarf, white clothes racks with coats in black and beige, next to it a showcase with handmade jewelry, pictures and postcards from artists on dark gray walls: this shop looks like a modern concept store in the photos.
But the concept here is Lüneburg: "Regional from here" is the name of the pop-up store in a previously empty shop in downtown Lüneburg.
Products from the region can be bought here, completely stationary, since the end of October - shortly before the shutdown began.
"That is very well received, we are surprised ourselves," says Florian Rollert, who founded the shop together with business partner Jan Gelinsky.
“Since the new shutdown there have been fewer people in Lüneburg.
But we have already reached the maximum number of eight customers in the store. "
Rollert, full-time operator of a jewelry store in Lüneburg, is taking a kind of escape forwards with this store: »We are convinced stationary retailers, even in times of Corona.
And we want to give local producers and the artists and associations particularly affected an opportunity to sell their products, ”says Rollert.
This is also possible thanks to the Lüneburg landlord, who accommodated them with the rent.
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The "Regionalien von hier" pop-up store in Lüneburg
Photo: Florian Rollert
People shop more locally
The fact that the pop-up store is apparently better received than expected could even be due to the corona crisis: Because of the pandemic, more people are more likely to shop in front of the door instead of driving to the next big city.
The people of Lüneburg are therefore increasingly frequenting their local shops instead of going on a shopping trip to downtown Hamburg.
And city dwellers are more likely to shop in the row of shops in their neighborhood than in the city center.
This is also shown by a representative survey by the opinion research institute Civey on behalf of SPIEGEL: One third of those surveyed have been shopping in small local shops since the shutdown on November 2, only 6 percent of those surveyed say they frequent large shopping streets or centers more often .
In fact, especially the central city centers with their large retail chains are complaining about particularly heavy customer losses during this shutdown.
Because even if the shops remain open this time, unlike in the first shutdown in spring, there are fewer customers.
According to the retail association HDE, the number was recently 40 percent below the previous year's figure.
While restaurants and hotels receive generous aid from the state in November, retailers see themselves at a disadvantage.
"If politicians do not intervene now with aid programs, we will soon pass the tipping point from which many dealers can no longer be saved," says Managing Director Stefan Genth.
Fashion suffers the most
The Civey survey for SPIEGEL also shows where the problem lies.
40 percent of those surveyed said they had gone shopping less since the shutdown.
Just under three percent go shopping more often, a good half (57 percent) state that they do this as often as before.
If you look at the product groups, the fashion industry suffers the most: Almost thirty percent of those surveyed said they bought less fashion, followed by interior design and entertainment electronics (around one fifth each of the consumers surveyed).
Smaller retailers in particular are defying the crisis with creative solutions.
In Lüneburg they have joined forces on the online portal shop-lueneburg.de.
You can order a lens bolognese from “Viola's spices and delicacies” shop, a rubber ankle boot from Aigle from the Schnabel shoe store, and a watch with a Lüneburg skyline from the Suepke jeweler.
Medienhaus Lüneburg operates the Shop-Lüneburg.de for local retailers, collects goods purchased online from stores through its logistics service provider and delivers them on the same day.
The goods are not lavishly packed, as is the case with Amazon, but are delivered in a shoe box.
The online shop was founded before the corona crisis to help local retailers, but it has grown significantly this year: “Many of our dealers do not have an online shop at all, which of course they lack in the shutdown.
And many customers want to shop online, but locally, «says Thomas Grupe from Medienhaus Lüneburg.
Running videos from the living room
Even a central location in a big city doesn't have to be a disadvantage - if you respond appropriately to the crisis.
This is shown by the Frankfurt running shop in downtown Frankfurt am Main.
The store without an online shop was completely digitized in the first Corona shutdown, and the running analysis was also transferred to the Internet.
While it was completely closed in the first shutdown, but numerous people discovered running, owner Jost Wiebelhaus had his customers send photos of their feet and videos of their running style from the living room.
"Then we selected models, discussed it with the customers on the phone and sent them the shoes - that saved us," says Wiebelhaus.
This online advice is still used, but now much less - the shops are open again.
In the corona crisis, Wiebelhaus joined the initiative "Dealers Help Dealers", founded on March 19, on the LinkedIn career network.
More than 3,000 retail companies and associations are now exchanging ideas about the consequences and how to deal with Corona.
"Local Heroes" vouchers are designed to keep purchasing power locally
The “Local Heroes” voucher system is also growing, a kind of alliance between retailers in Saarland: The new voucher cards can be bought in stores or digitally and are valid for a special shop, restaurant or tattoo studio or for all participating retailers in a community.
The goal: to keep purchasing power in town and to network businesses - more important than ever since the corona crisis.
"I think we can help ourselves," says Heidi Huoy, co-initiator of "Local Heroes" and owner of the Huoy fashion house in St. Wendel.
Jost Wiebelhaus from the Frankfurter Laufshop has found his own answer to the corona pandemic since the summer: "Now we mainly assign online consultation appointments in the store - I copied that from the Apple shops." That means fewer customers are there at once, instead, they were better distributed, whereas in the past everything concentrated at lunchtime and on weekends.
He will definitely keep this digital appointment allocation.
“You always have to come up with something new - and faster than the big guys,” says Wiebelhaus.
Even if he had to close the shop again, "we'll hold out for another two or three weeks - we now know how it's done."
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