She runs more than one bookstore

Created: 10/06/2022 10:16 am

Puchheim is unimaginable without Nicola Bräunling and her bookshop.

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Nicola Bräunling has been running the only bookstore in Puchheim for years.

And quite successfully, as several awards prove.

The Tagblatt presents the literature-loving businesswoman in more detail.

Puchheim – She was Bavaria's bookseller of the year, occasionally hosts a baking show and recently received the Minister of Education to read to her.

She is a member of the jury for the city's readers' prize and introduced the format "Puchheim reads a book" if not invented.

Her small shop is considered a cultural meeting place, she herself – as the mayor once put it – as a stroke of luck for the togetherness in urban society.

But who is this jack of all trades named Nicola Bräunling really?

Entrepreneur with a special talent for marketing?

Communicative type who just likes chatting and chatting?

Bookworm and literature lover with an infectious enthusiasm for the world of books?

Everything equally, because it doesn't contradict itself?

She herself says that one cannot separate the person Bräunling and the bookseller of the same name anyway.

Someone who communicates with customers on social networks before the first coffee in the morning, only closes the shop after eleven hours during the week and also holds the fort until two on Saturdays doesn't have much free time for other passions apart from reading.

The job in an industry in which "many people have to earn money" is demanding and does not allow for great profit striving.

"You don't get really rich from it," says Bräunling.

contact with customers

But for them, the contact with customers is also an asset.

She considers herself approachable, gets along with everyone, wants to be open, even for people who only buy a stamp.

And the regular audience rarely leaves the store without first chatting with the bookseller, although it's by no means always about the highly intellectual.

People like to be spoken to and it's part of her nature anyway.

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Incidentally, the Corona years have shown that it pays off in a certain way.

The store would probably not have survived without the loyal customers who ordered vouchers or who ordered them particularly eagerly in order to work off a long reading list.

But professional advice is also part of the business.

What do you give a brother-in-law who is not known much more than that he occasionally reads?

With humorous short stories you can't spoil anything in the family, knows Bräunling, who mainly counts older people, mostly female, and young families among her customers.

The book lady has everything: school books and guides, crime novels and travel guides, cookbooks and classics.

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Even the shelf with the old masters from Shakespeare to Grass - motto: what you always wanted to read - doesn't gather any dust.

The only difficult thing is keeping track of the flood of new releases.

Because only what you or one of your three employees have read is recommended to the audience if they like it.

strange worlds

Sometimes, however, even the daily topicality leads to the rediscovery of older works.

Recently, after the Queen's death, she posted a recommendation for The Sovereign Reader, a "magical little sweet book" about a monarch who discovers her love for browsing.

A tightrope walk between sympathy and marketing, of course, which also requires a sure instinct.

For Bräunling, books open up strange worlds or provide endless knowledge or celebrate language.

And they convey calm in an ever faster and more colorful world.

For them, analogue reading is therefore not a cultural technique of the past.

On the contrary, she recognizes a certain renaissance of the book when young bloggers and influencers are promoting literature instead of clothes and cosmetics.

"Reading isn't as dying as you might think," she believes.

Could there have been a bookstore like this somewhere else, for example in Maisach?

"I don't know," says Bräunling.

But to add: "Puchheim and I go well together."

The assertion that she helps shape the city's culture, she only wants to apply selectively.

But she is probably already important as a retailer.

"And the fact that I'm busy as a person is good for the city - and she knows that too." On the other hand, the city is also good to her under the leadership of an equally busy and open mayor.

an institution

The Hamburg native used to work in direct marketing for pharmaceutical products - she still talks about it with a slight shudder - before she switched to bookseller and finally wanted to open her own shop.

A local friend drew her attention to Puchheim.

The start went quickly, but it took some time to really arrive.

The financial dry spell was longer than expected.

Now, at 57, she's an established institution.

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You can find more current news from the district of Fürstenfeldbruck at Merkur.de/Fürstenfeldbruck.