Empty parking garages, here at L + T in Osnabrück
Photo: L + T
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“It’s a bit spooky, a ghostly scene,” says Thomas Ganter: When the managing director of the Lengermann + Trieschmann fashion house in Osnabrück is currently visiting his workplace, his way leads through an abandoned parking garage to his largely deserted fashion, sports and adventure store: 9,000 square meters with dim emergency lighting, tempered to an uninviting 18 degrees. In the store, which is closed to customers, Ganter meets 50 employees from the accounting, logistics and digital departments.
This also reflects the situation in other fashion houses. “My husband, my son and I are in the shop every day from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.”, says Ellen Wigner from Erlebe Wigner in Zirndorf. They are supported “by two employees from the marketing department who are not on short-time work”. At Garhammer in Waldkirchen, too, “on good days, up to 20 percent of the employees are on duty,” reports owner Johannes Huber.
Lockdown measures
10. Fancy breakfast, lunch or dinner to go? Experience Wigner! has specialized in topic-related “pleasure boxes” during the lockdown, which are very popular with customers. Here is the box for the upcoming Valentine’s Day.
Photo: Experience Wigner!
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There is no shortage of challenges and tasks. The focus is on considerations of the measures to be taken to reopen. Anyone who has not yet integrated a fresh air supply into their store is planning to “set up mobile air filters”, for example Jens Ristedt, owner of the Ristedt fashion house in Bremen.
Many retailers bring their fashion houses to a high gloss or use the time to renovate. In order to maintain contact with customers, it is important to use social media channels.
Some of the in-house restaurants offer “to-go” menus. At Juhasz Mode & Genuss in Bad Reichenhall, for example, there are nine different dishes on the menu of the day, while Erlebe Wigner specializes in themed “enjoyment boxes”. Customers accept such offers very well, “but it doesn’t really help us,” says Ellen Wigner. “We do this primarily in order to continue to be visible.”
Use all channels
12. In lockdown, the goods sold by phone or WhatsApp are often delivered personally by the boss. Ristedt advertises this service as a “fashion taxi”. Jens Ristedt, who runs the 153-year-old company in the 5th generation, has specifically located a photo with a historic Ristedt delivery van, a Borgward Goliath VG 800.
Photo: Ristedt
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What task fashion retailers are doing in their houses these days: Above all, they see the many goods that are accumulating on the sales areas. Therefore everyone tries to market the winter goods on alternative channels.
“We are of course pushing our online business,” says Christian Rugen, Managing Director of CJ Schmidt in Husum: “The Click & Collect rate has risen rapidly.” Those who do not have their own online shop can offer advice and personal shopping services via Zoom, Telephone or Whatsapp or send – like Garhammer or Juhasz – individually compiled “Style Boxes”.
Stephan Becker, owner of the 300 square meter Constanca specialty store in Trier, has already requested spring goods from his suppliers for his “fashionable customers who are already specifically asking for new fashions”, “but with a value date” (generally speaking value date) . Now he puts together a selection of articles for his regular customers, who pick up the goods at the shop door.
Often the bosses of the fashion houses also deliver goods personally. Jens Ristedt, for example, advertises his service specifically as a “fashion taxi”. Even though everyone gives their best, it is “of course very depressing to walk through a great fashion house every day whose doors remain closed and to see the worries in the eyes of the employees,” says Christian Rugen. “The worst is the uncertainty,” says Johannes Huber. “Now the discussion will continue until March – and you won’t find out how things will go on.”
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