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Sauna builder Daria Reinbold: "We are super grateful that we belong to the industries that are doing well even during Corona."
Photo: Christine Olma
The room is almost empty.
On this Saturday in December, Daria Reinbold is filming around the exhibition area with her mobile phone camera.
You can see a wooden cabin, next to it a few wooden samples, otherwise: nothing.
In Daria Reinbold's case, emptiness is a sign of success.
Your family builds and sells saunas - more successfully than ever in the more than 50 years since the family business was founded.
Daria Reinbold, 30, is the third generation in the Reinbold sauna construction company, which her grandfather Andreas established in Konstein, Upper Bavaria, in 1964.
Around Konstein, Eichstätt district, there is primarily nature, pilgrimage churches and the view of Wellheim Castle, which attracts many cycle tourists.
But more and more people don't just come to cycle: They go to Konstein to treat themselves to a sauna.
You then travel from Munich, from Ingolstadt, the well-paid big cities in the region.
During the corona pandemic, says Reinbold, many customers were connected to the consultation via video, then also from further away.
In a good week, the Reinbolds will be delivering two sauna cabins, most of them to private customers.
"We are super grateful that we belong to the industries that are doing well during Corona," says daughter Daria.
To be the winner of the crisis always sounds stupid.
In her case, however, it is quite true.
Short-time work has not yet existed for her currently eight employees.
And the company holidays last August were shortened from two weeks to one.
Work is currently also often done on Saturdays - because otherwise the mountain of projects simply won't get any smaller.
"I don't want to say that I have a guilty conscience, but hotels, restaurants and physiotherapists are currently experiencing completely different times," says Reinbold.
"Sauna, wellness and health at home are simply booming - right now."
Germany is a sauna stronghold
And indeed: in no other country in the world are there so many people using saunas as in Germany, there are around 10,000 public sauna facilities in this country.
"Especially the joint naked sweating of both sexes in the dry sauna is a piece of German culture," said the managing director of the German Sauna Association, Rolf-Andreas Pieper, in 2018 in SPIEGEL.
More than 26 million people in Germany are "often" or "now and then" guests in a sauna or steam bath in their free time, figures from the Allensbach market and advertising media analysis from last year show.
And the sauna for at home is also popular: According to Sauna-Bund boss Pieper, 1.7 million Germans have a sauna in their own four walls.
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And that although the sauna is a relatively new phenomenon in this country.
Saunas first attracted attention during the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin: At that time, Finnish athletes asked for a sauna to be built in order to be able to relax and thus maintain their physical performance.
After the war, some veterans who got to know sauna bathing on the Eastern Front opened their first sweat baths in Germany.
A fixed idea brought the sauna to Upper Bavaria
How the sauna came to Konstein in Upper Bavaria in the 1960s, Daria Reinbold can only recount vaguely.
At that time, her grandfather Andreas was still running a carpentry shop and one day received a special order: A heating engineer from the area, a passionate sauna fan, had developed his own sauna heater - and asked Andreas Reinbold to take care of the wood paneling.
"When people noticed how beneficial a sauna like this can be, others in the region also wanted one," says Daria Reinbold.
The sauna from Upper Bavaria became a business idea.
Andreas Reinbold converted his carpentry shop and specialized in building saunas.
30 years later he handed the business over to his son Albrecht.
It was by no means always clear that Daria would also take over from her father at some point.
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The Reinbolds: Albrecht, Andreas and Daria
Photo:
Private
After finishing school, her path initially led away from Upper Bavaria.
She first moved to Friedrichshafen and later to London and Berlin to study marketing and communication.
"I'm glad my parents said at the time: Daria, go out into the world, take a look at everything, meet new people," says Reinbold.
After completing her studies, she coordinated the PR work for a hotel agency in Berlin.
When, after seven years, she was tired of city life, she decided to return to Upper Bavaria.
Reinbold recalls that she had been considering for six months whether she should take the step back to Konstein and start her own business.
In the end, she decided to do it.
»When I told my friends that I wanted to take over the company, quite a few asked: How can you do that?
Running a craft business as a woman? "
Daria Reinbold
»When I told my friends that I wanted to take over the company, quite a few asked: How can you do that?
Running a craft business as a woman? ”But Reinbold's decision was made: She has lived in Konstein again since 2018 and works in her parents' business.
»My areas are marketing, communication and customer management.
I want to develop the company further, especially digitize it, «she says.
According to the plan, she will take over the company entirely within the next ten years.
And it has already changed a lot.
Working on the cell phone is work too
Thanks to Daria, the Reinbolds now have a website for the company, customers from outside are introduced via video chat through the workshop and their new sauna.
With some employees, she initially encountered prejudices, says Reinbold: "Some of the first had to understand that I work when I'm on the phone." Nevertheless, her current job is exactly the right one.
"Here I can address and design things that would not have been possible in ten years in my old job."
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Daria Reinbold with father Albrecht in the workshop
Photo:
Private
There is one thing that Reinbold has not been able to change so far: carpentry and sauna construction are actually a man's world, she says.
She would like to bring more carpenters into the company, only men are working there at the moment.
The last woman left after a short time: to Audi.
»There were times in the mid-1990s when half the workforce moved towards Ingolstadt.
They simply pay better there. "
Who is currently buying a sauna?
The times are better right now, things are going well at Reinbold Saunabau - and that in the middle of the corona crisis.
How do you manage to sell people luxury when many cannot think of luxury?
"Of course, we benefit from all those who have been working from home for months and need relaxation or want to do something for their health," says Reinbold.
Customers want, for example, a sauna with direct access to the living room or bedroom, they want to watch football from the sauna or relax in bed after the shower.
LED colored lights, music system, starry sky: "We can offer a lot," says Reinbold.
It starts at around 8500 euros, and everything is open at the top.
What if the corona pandemic is over at some point and the sauna boom subsides?
"Then we have the creative aspiration as a company to think innovatively and adapt the business model," says Daria Reinbold.
In any case, she no longer wants an office job in the big city: “I have a sauna here at home.
That would probably never have been possible in Berlin or London. "
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