9 ms·

The hyper-specialist shops of Berlin

294 points by moreentropy 7y ago

TomMarius 7y ago
Yeah, the communists have destroyed this in the eastern part of Europe nearly perfectly EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for a factual, accepted, well researched and well known statement?
- dvh 7y ago
  Coming from commie part of Europe I feel ya. I've recently saw documentary about Japanese family that makes same product for third generation, this would not be possible here as communists didn't allowed private business, people get separated from soil during collectivization and the link got broken. It will take many years to get restored, if ever...
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    If you have a family running a bakery, then you have a communist revolution, surely you still want the family to run the bakery? Under federal planning, for example, you just now supply them without charge and receive the needed goods; ensuring the family have what they need. It doesn't seem it's a necessity of communism, rather a specific thing that happened in this case?
    - badpun 7y ago
      Communist’s perhaps biggest point was that the means of production (a bakery in this case) should belong to „the people”, which in practice meant the state.
      - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
        Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear; you still need people in the bakery - or a bakery - to make the bread, assuming you want people to eat. So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. Obviously the ownership changes. Your last clause, is the kicker, just as it is now in Western Democracies, the State is supposed to be "the people" here now too, but in both cases it instead appears to be some small cadre of an in-group instead. However, none of that seems particularly pertinent to whether you keep using a bakery and the bakers you have when you transition from private to collective ownership. Consider an example, Woolworths - a general store in UK and elsewhere - collapsed and in some locations the workers bought it for themselves to run as a collective. The same people did the same jobs, largely, immediately after the change just that the profits [and liabilities] were shared amongst them instead of belonging only to the owners.
        TomMarius 7y ago
        > So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. That is not what happened. What happened is that Stalin ordered to kill them. It was paranoia on top of other things (breaking the nation was not ment just as a side effect). They reorganized the society very quickly once they could start organizing people into agricultural communes (JZD in Czech) and steal everything (literally) from them in the process. Of course we know how well it worked.
- ricardobeat 7y ago
  Wording. Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It’s an interesting point. Is there a perceptible difference for Berliners between E/W shop types?
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    >Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It's just about the shortest, blandest way to make that statement. That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive to say X did Y when that is fact (or as close to fact as you can get with a subjective matter like this, nobody is going to say that communism was good for Eastern Europe) says something about culture here in 2019.
    - TomMarius 7y ago
      > That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive says something about culture here in 2019. I'm literally writing this comment from mobile while standing in a crowd near anti-communist protest in Prague. I can't really wrap my mind around this culture change.
      - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
        It makes no sense. That's why I'm calling attention to the absurdity of it.
      - pjc50 7y ago
        People are very tired of the mildest bit of social democrat market intervention being denounced as "communism". Like "Nazi" it's a word that has been overused into uselessness, so it gets reflexively downvoted. Besides, communism in the original sense is realistically dead. The Berlin Wall has been down for almost 30 years. So people complaining about it in the present come across as McCarthyite. (I think your original comment would have gone down better if it had been clearer about the past tense - that communism did destroy a lot of small businesses, but this is not an ongoing thing)
- simongray 7y ago
  It doesn't seem that factual, accepted and well-researched when this article directly contradicts your statement: > In such a skewed retail landscape, many small shops found they could compete by specialising in goods neglected by generalist department stores, especially since retail space was cheap and in plentiful supply behind the Iron Curtain. So while you may be right, you may also be wrong. Maybe it's not as black&white as you make it out to be.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    I think you are misunderstanding the article. Going to the east, these specialised shops directed by the communists, put in place of previous, private ones, have in no way anything to do with the small family businesses you're trying to compare them with. They often literally shot the whole owner family. Everything of this is documented and taught in primary schools all around eastern Europe. All the small businesses in Prague city centre were destroyed, today it's dominated by various minishops with Russian matrioshkas and other scam shit and Vietnamese (they rent it, not their fault) marketplaces selling fake weed and overpriced chips, drinks and cola, and of course by scam exchange places. This used to be space full of small coffee shops, restaurants, specialised family businesses etc in the 1920's. My home city Hradec Kralove (100k citizens) has nearly completely empty wider city centre - since the revolution, no one even wants to do business there. All small business owners were killed or killed by proxy (uranium mines, all of this uranium was then "given" to/taken by the Russians for free), their property confiscated and never recovered (to whom anyways).
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Do you, or does anyone, know enough to give an example of a specialist shop in the East; a button seller, say; that existed prior to the Berlin Wall, that was "destroyed" and what system took it's place to fill the particular need? Like, people still needed fabric and buttons?? Did all single goods-type shops close, like butchers, bakers, etc.. How was supply managed? Presumably those killed refused to give up ownership to the state?
      - 7y ago
- fyfy18 7y ago
  In my post-Soviet city that doesn't seem to be the case. I know of a shop that just sells car batteries - literally nothing else. They have maybe 30 products in stock, and can order it if you need something else. I don't think they have a web store.
galfarragem 7y ago
Another specialist Berlin shop to the list (modelmaking/art materials and tools) and very famous amoung architects: https://www.modulor.de/en/store-berlin/ https://www.modulor.de/en/store-berlin/
- microtherion 7y ago
  My sister works there. It's a very nice store, but I wouldn't describe it as hyper specialized. Maybe more of a general stationery/art supplies store, but with a lot of extra depth in some areas (architectural supplies etc).
cylinder 7y ago
If only I wasn't so boring; some interesting retail spaces have opened up in my area.
cirrrrrrus 7y ago
I live in Paris and you can find highly specialized shops too. Some shops only sell about three types of fabric, some others will sell only buttons, a certain type of leather or a special type of ink. I love getting in those shops and meeting the people who are really passionate about their visibly small yet huge niche. It always get wonderful once you start looking at the details.
- crispyambulance 7y ago
  FWIW, there is likely to be a button shop wherever you got enough seamstresses, tailors, dressmakers and fashion industry. Buttons are really something you have to see and touch in person. As a child, my mother used to take me with her to "Parker Buttons" in downtown Pittsburgh. I remember plunging my arms elbows-deep into containers of shiny black buttons. Nothing else like it in the world.
  - DonHopkins 7y ago
    Those Button Men can be pretty intense! https://youtu.be/UBOG5556_0g?t=12m5s https://youtu.be/UBOG5556_0g?t=12m5s Mr. Lossoff always reminds me of another Button Man, Ted Selker, inventor of the distinguished "Joy Button". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhnlaUxsL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhnlaUxsL8
AllegedAlec 7y ago
> he worked part-time to build and sell his own ant terrariums, which he calls “formicariums”, from the insect’s Latin name. That's not just what he calls it, that's the official name for them.
arethuza 7y ago
For many many years there was a shop on Victoria street in Edinburgh that appeared to sell nothing but brooms and large balls of string - it was even mentioned in Complicity by Iain Banks. Here are some pics of it: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_MY_P_S/0_my_photographs_shops_victoria_street_40_me03_jan_1992.htm http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_MY_P_S/0_my_photographs_shops_... Edit: Sad to say that I passed that shop for many years going to uni in the Grassmarket (both as a student and working there) and never went in!
- rezeroed 7y ago
  "Toilet brushes re-bristled" - never knew that was done, and glad that's not my job.
  - yourapostasy 7y ago
    With enough cleaning solvents and disinfectants, any object can be made safe again. There are people who dive into literal sewage retention ponds full of human waste in full SCUBA gear every day to work (clearing obstructions). After reading about that, squeamishness was never an issue for me. As long as it isn't some kind of chemical/biological/radiological warfare agent type substance, or a compound that makes chemists run from a room, I'm fine with it now. That said, I'm absolutely delighted that toilet brushes can be rebristled, and sad that it seems there isn't any place in the US that does this. It irks me that when a brush is retired, a gigantic chunk of plastic heads into the landfill. I have yet to find a low-impact scrubbing solution, and rebristling with some organic-origin bristle that breaks down amending the soil would be ideal. I'd pay 2-3X the cost of a normal throwaway plastic brush to mail in a brush head and get back a rebristled brush head, and wonder if the rebristling could be automated.
    - rezeroed 7y ago
      If you start putting used toilet brushes in the post, I will no longer accept any mail. Are you not confusing biodegradable with repair? Wooden brushes with bamboo bristles or something instead of poo post?
javajosh 7y ago
Yes, there is a balloon shop around the corner. They don't have anything except balloons, but they go deep.
weinzierl 7y ago
Several hyper-specialist shops I know in Munich: - balloon shops seem to do really well because we have several here and every major city seems to have one - foam shop for when you need to fix your upholstery - venetian blind store which only sells the vertical kind - Ketten Wild was a chain shop that only sold chains but chains in all forms and sizes - la porcelaine blanche's slogan is "only china, only white" and that is what they do - elk shop for everything elk related - not that we have any elks in Germany but elks are cute - Schrauben Preisinger sells only screws. They claim they have 30000 different types in their store and this is absolutely credible. A few years ago I was there to get some M1 screws for a project when I witnessed an interesting exchange between another customer and a salesman. The customer had brought a screw with a quite wide thread. It was a straight screw, not tapered and not a wood screw, just with an obviously non-metric thread. He inquired if they had this type of screw in stock. The salesman answered slightly offended that this was a shop for machine screws and they would not sell furniture screws. Also button shops are super useful. If you lose a button you go there with your piece of clothing and they will find a suitable replacement in no time. I never visited the one in Berlin but the one in Munich saved me good money. EDIT: I just remembered two more: - Gummi bear shops are a bit like balloon shops. I don't understand it but there seems to be enough demand to support several of them in a single city. - Berlin's Ampelmann. Maybe doesn't quite fit into the category because it's more of a tourist curiosity. On the other hand: A shop that only sells stuff related to the graphic design of a symbol on the traffic lights of a defunct state is quite hyper-specialized I guess.
- dreen 7y ago
  Please give more information on the elk shop. I need it... for research (and cant find it on google)
  - weinzierl 7y ago
    It was located in Frauenstraße near Isartor [1]. If I remember correctly its name was just "Elchladen". Unfortunately I can't find it either, so it probably closed. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1343175,11.5814045,19.15z https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1343175,11.5814045,19.15z
urbanjunkie 7y ago
And of course James Smith is a famous umbrella and walking stick shop in the middle of London https://www.james-smith.co.uk/ https://www.james-smith.co.uk/
Myrmornis 7y ago
Surely the obvious question is: is the high street shop really a justified expense? Surely all the sales are online? The more specialized the shop, the less one can hope to fulfill ones sales volume from people in physical cruising distance. The article doesn’t seem to address this, except for acknowledging that most sales are online.
- ljcn 7y ago
  The answer is probably that shop owners would rather work in a shop that satisfies online orders than in a warehouse.
  - saalweachter 7y ago
    The physical shopping radius for a specialty shop is also a lot larger than a generic store. If you have the store to find mid-century burnished widgets at, people might regularly come from a hundred or more miles away when they really need just the right sort of widget, and when they do -- if your stock lives up to the hype -- they will tend to be big customers, buying a lot (since they weren't casually dropping in), being fairly price insensitive (since they have few alternatives for what they need), and repeat customers (since you seldom end up needing a specialty item once). You might still need an online storefront, or you might take phone orders from your regulars, but the clientele of a specialty shop is radically different than the clientele of a generic shop, which relies more on people wandering by and which competes with ten other stores a mile away, and the big box store off the highway.
  - pjc50 7y ago
    I think this is exactly it - these stores are now perfect fusion of small online store and small offline store. If you order something online the owner picks it off the shelf and puts it in an envelope - and the online shop can drive traffic to the physical one.
- Iv 7y ago
  In theory it does not make a lot sense. In practice, I am amazed at how much crap most online webshops are. In a shop I can browse through the wares much easier. I can examine them, look at the size and specs, feel the weight and texture, get ideas. More often than not, crucial specs of the product I am looking at are not available. Dimensions and weights are often missing, I often can't look at more than 5 or 6 articles at the time. Webshops are great when you know exactly what you need. They are hell if your need is "4 or 5 buttons that would look good on that fabric"
bluetomcat 7y ago
Is anyone else failing to see a legitimate need for sticky tape in tens of different colours? What about the shopping experience of the future, when such shops are destined to be the "future of retail"? Suddenly you are now spending an hour choosing between balloons of different shapes and colours or the perfectly matching button for your shirt. It's an illusion of choice, fueling pointless production of variations of the same thing and targeting your attention and time.
- jameskegel 7y ago
  I’d imagine this line of thinking is what Apple hopes for, people burdened with the luxury of choice who just want someone to tell them what they want.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  What do you mean "a legitimate need"? Why do people need paint in more than one or two colors? Why do people need multiple styles of clothes, beyond a "summer uniform" and "winter uniform"? Why do people bother to maintain both vi and emacs when only one is necessary? Most of the time, any tape will do, but sometimes you want the perfect paisley to complement your wrapping paper choice. Since most people don't care most of the time, most stores that sell tape won't have more than one or two kinds, so you go to a specialty retailer to find the unusual stuff for unusual circumstances.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Your comment seems well made, and to make a good point. We waste a lot of productivity on providing choice. I don't think pure utilitarianism is the answer, but it seems we could do better. But then, noone needs party balloons at all ...
- jdietrich 7y ago
  Adhesive tape is an incredibly sophisticated and versatile product. Yes, there are silly products (emoji duct tape) but there are also an immense variety of tapes with uniquely useful properties. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All-3M-Products/Adhesives-Tapes/?N=5002385+8710676+8711017+3294857497&rt=r3 https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All...
gjm11 7y ago
In Cambridge (UK), on an out-of-the-way side street, for many years there was a shop called "Roll On Blank Tape". I never understood how they could possibly do enough business to stay _in_ business, and always suspected that if you asked in just the right way they might sell you some ... not-blank tapes. Boringly, the available evidence suggests that actually it's just that the person who ran the shop was really interested in cassette tape and didn't mind not making any money to speak of.
- ben_w 7y ago
  From what I’ve seen and heard, that place closed some time between 1999 and 2008, although the shopfront remains unchanged even now. I last went past it in March, dog walking with a friend — and he used to buy tapes there.
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  Like, just audio cassette or all types of blank magnetic tape, or blank tape in general? Like masking-, sello-, elephant-tapes?
  - danohuiginn 7y ago
    Just audio cassettes, though they weren't too pure to also sell blank minidiscs and the like.
- fyfy18 7y ago
  I imagine the premises for a lot of these types of businesses must be inherited. You can probably make enough to live pretty ok from a small business like this, especially if you aren't the sole bread-winner for your family.
- fredley 7y ago
  Just thinking about Cambridge shops made me sad about the terrible loss of Brian Jordan's music shop http://www.brianjordanmusic.co.uk/closure.asp http://www.brianjordanmusic.co.uk/closure.asp
- simonbyrne 7y ago
teddyh 7y ago
I would assume that the decline of specialist shops is strongly correlated with rising rents for storefront properties. But with online shopping on the rise, maybe landlords (outside shopping malls and after some years to pass through the stages of grief) can accept that there just isn’t that much money in rents for storefronts anymore, and that specialist shops thereby can continue to exist. Of course, the risk is that they will just tear it all down and convert it into lofts, office complexes or something instead, leaving nothing except lofts, office complexes and huge malls.
- gbear605 7y ago
  I don’t know about in Germany, but the huge malls are going the way of the dodo in the US.
  - zach_garwood 7y ago
    I briefly worked for a retail company a couple years ago that was getting amazing sweetheart deals on short-term leases in malls because the mall owners almost literally could not give away the space. They are desperate to host just about anything in order to make their mall look less like a ghost town.
  - notJim 7y ago
    People say this, but both of the malls I've been to in the past few years (one in Bellevue, WA and one in Chandler, AZ) have been completely packed almost every time. Is it really still true that malls are going away?
    - siidooloo 7y ago
      I believe it’s actually the smaller malls and malls near smaller towns that are dying from oversupply. The giant warehouse style stripmalls have hurt the small malls in the exurbs. Big malls in big cities seem to still be expanding.
    - mediaman 7y ago
      A-class malls are still doing well. The mall you're referring to in Bellevue, where I have also been, is a class-A mall. Class-A malls tend to be in busier, higher wealth, sometimes more urban areas, have best in class furnishings, and have tier-1 national tenants, with many of those tenants catering to more of a premium/luxury consumer. Most B-class or C-class malls, however, are dying.
userbinator 7y ago
This reminds me of when I was in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei area --- it's mostly electronics, but you can find plenty of shops selling only varieties of one type of product.
SolaceQuantum 7y ago
I also find hyper-specialist shops in america wherever there is still cheap land enough for it. When I used to live in Buffalo, there were small shops- one specifically for new agey "gypsy" clothing, one for bath soap made in house, one for herbs for witchcraft, one that specialized in stones. I really enjoyed those places and miss them now how I live in NYC (although NYC has its own quirks- big gay ice cream is great!)
- mattkrause 7y ago
  New York City has tons of these too; they’re just generally not well-advertised since they many of them cater to a specific market. There are a few button stores in New York, mostly in the Garment District, but also on the upper east side. There are stores selling all kinds of obscure art supplies, kitchen equipment, and lab gear too. To be fair, I’m not sure exactly where you’d buy a currywurst cushion, but there’s a shop selling bones and stuff near NYU, if you someday decide that your living in room needs more of a Natural History Museum vibe.
  - madcaptenor 7y ago
    There used to be a bone store in Berkeley, called The Bone Room. They're online-only now, though, after the death of their founder and presumably also rising rents. (https://www.boneroom.com/about--contact.html https://www.boneroom.com/about--contact.html)
- inferiorhuman 7y ago
  The difference is that you'll find specialists in Germany even where land isn't super cheap. I remember really enjoying Stuttgart a few years ago because I hadn't seen any supermarkets. I'm sure there's a Lidl and whatnot but instead we stopped by a green grocer, bakery, and butcher for dinner. In Berlin I'm not surprised there's a meat furniture store.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  When I lived in Seattle there was a kilt store. Chicago had a button store in the last ten years or so, but it is gone. It became a Barneys New York. Roaming through the Nevada desert a few years ago (Tonopah area, I can't remember exactly where) I came across a small town with a book store that sold nothing but old 1940's-1970's cowboy paperbacks. $1 each. I bought 50.
k_bx 7y ago
While it's basically more of a cafe, I really like that a Brownie-specialized place opened here in Kyiv, Ukraine (called "Veterano Brownie", a concept they took from "Veterano Pizza", where only war veterans or forced migrants are hired). Always nice to see that something that you previously perceived as a treat of one type can be developed into a whole mini-company with lots of care and a variety of forms and tastes.
erk__ 7y ago
The sitre of the meat textile shop is pretty interesting: https://aufschnitt.net/ https://aufschnitt.net/
tw1010 7y ago
This doesn't really make sense to me. On the internet hyper-specialisation is obvious since space is virtually unlimited. But in real life, I mean, real estate is limited so why wouldn't darwinian market forces make a shop with product diversity + epsilon out compete a shop with a more niche spectrum of products, until only walmart and such remains?
- tim333 7y ago
  >The majority of Antstore’s sales take place via the company’s website I think they kind of act as showrooms for online sales.
- weinzierl 7y ago
  I'm pretty sure that what you described is happening. It's just that the process has not yet been completed. I don't think these shops are "the future of retail" like it says in the article. What another comment said about showrooms makes a lot of sense. Also there are some fringe businesses that will never go online. Portrait photography businesses come to mind. Pharmacies are a thing where I live, because subsidized prescription only drugs can only be sold there. But apart from that I wonder what will happen to all the smaller sales rooms in the inner cities?
- mywittyname 7y ago
  Product differentiation is much easier in person since you see & can touch the product. Plus having a specialist available to speak with regarding your needs is often valuable. With online purchases, you're limited to pictures, price, technical specs to make decisions.
- bluGill 7y ago
  Many reasons. First, WalMart doesn't have everything. Only a few people in any city are interested in buying specialty items, it doesn't make sense to WalMart to stock that everywhere when some stores will never have a sale. A specialty store brings in customers from all over the city. A human who knows one product well is very useful. WalMart salesmen don't know their product. Going to a specialist who knows the product well makes sense because you can get advice. Also, WalMart as limited space: the specialist shop will often have the exact thing you need, while WalMart will have at best something similar, for real niche items you can't even get a substitute. For the above to work you need a large enough population. The small hyper-specialist shop only works when there are enough people who will buy from it. Small towns in the middle of nowhere have a specialist store selling only farm equipment, you won't find that in the middle of a big city (you will on the edge). A big city will have specialist stores to support the industry (and hobbyists) in that town. When the item needs to be custom fit you need a store. WalMart can fit glasses, but they don't know anything about pens. I bet many of you didn't know that some pens are custom adjusted to the user - there are enough people who like expensive pens to support pen shop in some cities. Likewise golf clubs, bowling balls...
chris_overseas 7y ago
I've been past a specialist umbrella shop [0] in London hundreds of times and it has always intrigued me, though I have never been inside. I'm not quite sure it's in the same vein as the other speciality shops people are listing here though, since it has been there for almost 200 years and clearly targets the more discerning customer with high quality and bespoke items. [0] https://www.james-smith.co.uk/ https://www.james-smith.co.uk/
ekianjo 7y ago
Nothing too surprising really. The largest the density of people living in the same place, the more very niche businesses find enough folks to generate a livelihood out of it. The only reason why such shops tend to disappear is when rents become too high - but then nowadays they have the opportunity to go online instead. Tokyo has lots of hyper-specialist shops in different areas of the city, too.
theoh 7y ago
It's a trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpecializedStore https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpeciali...
- Noos 7y ago
  Not only is it a trope, UHF satirized this over twenty years ago. Spatula City! https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY
  - theoh 7y ago
    That's the image on the TV Tropes page.
dalore 7y ago
> Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... Although in this case I would say YES, that specialist shops are needed to combat Amazon being non specialist.
spectramax 7y ago
Hyper-specialization is everywhere if you ever step into any Asian country. Indians even have last names based on their hyper-specialized occupation. I was in Thailand and I saw a tiny shop whose only job was to take old torn notes and exchange it for a new one by charging a small flat fee. I had an Indian friend that told me that specializations in old cities was also geographically organized. One part of street would only sell pressure cookers while another side would sell watering cans.
- blowski 7y ago
  > I had an Indian friend that told me that specializations in old cities was also geographically organized. One part of street would only sell pressure cookers while another side would sell watering cans. That’s how London used to be, which is why the area around St Paul’s has roads like “Leather Lane”, “Milk Street”, and “Poultry”.
  - fredophile 7y ago
    I found Kowloon to be like this when I was visiting Hong Kong a few years ago. One that stands out in my mind was turning a corner and being on a street that seemed to sell nothing but pet turtles and fish.
    - spectramax 7y ago
      Wow. Did you happen to take pictures? If you do, please share as any photographic insight into Kowloon walled city is highly sought after!
      - fredophile 7y ago
        Kowloon and Kowloon walled city are not the same thing. Kowloon walled city was long gone when I made that trip.
  - vkou 7y ago
    Parts of Manhattan are still that way. There's a potted plant street, a fabric street...
dontbenebby 7y ago
>Instead of shutting up shop, Ghouneim relocated to humdrum Wittenau, a suburb of Berlin, and got some tape artists to decorate the facade of the new building. Footfall has naturally decreased, but 80% of his business comes from online sales and regular industrial clients, for whom Klebeband’s four employees cut and colour match tape of all varieties to order. Sounds like they realize that people going "Have you heard of the store that only sells stickytape?" is great buzz marketing generator. I assume they'd need space to store the tape to sell to their online and industrial clients, so why not stack it up next to a counter and make a little side cash from the consumer market? (I also have noticed in Germany they're much more cash-friendly, so I can totally see more people in DE preferring to go to a store and pay cash than submit PII like credit card and home address to purchase some sticky tape)
- treve 7y ago
  Cash-friendly and bank unfriendly. I lived in Germany for a year and I haven't had to finish a branch so many times in my life as that year.
jamespitts 7y ago
This is a classic case of what happens when key parts of doing business have a low-cost and low barrier to entry. Diversity and interestingness take hold.
abruzzi 7y ago
I don't know if its still there, but west Philadelphia (somewhere around 49th St.) had a Carrot Cake store. They made the best carrot cake I've ever had, and made nothing else.
MrZongle2 7y ago
FTA: "This is Antstore, the world’s first specialist ant shop, a business with around two dozen employees, a glass-cutting workshop, plastic and plaster modelling studios and a full-time social media manager." This sounds like a Monty Python sketch brought to life.
dashmatte 7y ago
Brooklyn has been doing it since about 2005 however the difference is that they do it more of an industrial scale to sell online qaned top other retailers. Commercial rent is too expensive in Brooklyn to do it on the retail side. I think the a special thing about what's going on in Germany is that the rent must be affordable even in high foot-traffic areas for them to do this.
rsynnott 7y ago
In Dublin, there was a shop that mostly just sold yeast until recently: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/johnny-ronan-made-an-offer-they-had-no-difficulty-refusing-1.3396814 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property... It always looked closed; I walked past it for a decade or so every day without realising that it was still in business. And then there’s the top floor of Stephens Green shopping center, which mostly just contains very strange specialised shops, with no visible customers.
anbop 7y ago
With online retail, brick-and-mortar retail is no longer useful just for aggregating things into a location that you can go to buy them, except for things that can't be shipped for cost or time reasons. So the value of brick and mortar retail becomes the ability to get you exactly what you need, and this often involves human expertise which by its nature specializes. The button store on the Upper East Side in New York City has a lady there who just hands you the button you need. You show her your jacket where the button got caught in a cab door, and she doesn't even have to hunt -- she walks to one of her thousands of teeny drawers, and pulls out your exact button or something pretty damn close. In the article, the scotch tape guy knows exactly what scotch tape you need, and that's the reason for his store existing. He could as easily have an office where he then orders you the tape online for drone delivery.
gpjanik 7y ago
The headline asks: Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... No. The Internet is.

294 points by moreentropy 7y ago

Yeah, the communists have destroyed this in the eastern part of Europe nearly perfectly EDIT: Why am I getting downvoted for a factual, accepted, well researched and well known statement?

dvh 7y ago
Coming from commie part of Europe I feel ya. I've recently saw documentary about Japanese family that makes same product for third generation, this would not be possible here as communists didn't allowed private business, people get separated from soil during collectivization and the link got broken. It will take many years to get restored, if ever...
- pbhjpbhj 7y ago
  If you have a family running a bakery, then you have a communist revolution, surely you still want the family to run the bakery? Under federal planning, for example, you just now supply them without charge and receive the needed goods; ensuring the family have what they need. It doesn't seem it's a necessity of communism, rather a specific thing that happened in this case?
  - badpun 7y ago
    Communist’s perhaps biggest point was that the means of production (a bakery in this case) should belong to „the people”, which in practice meant the state.
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Yes, perhaps I wasn't clear; you still need people in the bakery - or a bakery - to make the bread, assuming you want people to eat. So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. Obviously the ownership changes. Your last clause, is the kicker, just as it is now in Western Democracies, the State is supposed to be "the people" here now too, but in both cases it instead appears to be some small cadre of an in-group instead. However, none of that seems particularly pertinent to whether you keep using a bakery and the bakers you have when you transition from private to collective ownership. Consider an example, Woolworths - a general store in UK and elsewhere - collapsed and in some locations the workers bought it for themselves to run as a collective. The same people did the same jobs, largely, immediately after the change just that the profits [and liabilities] were shared amongst them instead of belonging only to the owners.
      - TomMarius 7y ago
        > So, the best people to do it are those with experience as bakers. There seems no reason why in short term you wouldn't use the existing means of production, and the existing skilled people. That is not what happened. What happened is that Stalin ordered to kill them. It was paranoia on top of other things (breaking the nation was not ment just as a side effect). They reorganized the society very quickly once they could start organizing people into agricultural communes (JZD in Czech) and steal everything (literally) from them in the process. Of course we know how well it worked.
ricardobeat 7y ago
Wording. Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It’s an interesting point. Is there a perceptible difference for Berliners between E/W shop types?
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  >Your comment feels more like vitriol than fact statement, regardless of being correct. It's just about the shortest, blandest way to make that statement. That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive to say X did Y when that is fact (or as close to fact as you can get with a subjective matter like this, nobody is going to say that communism was good for Eastern Europe) says something about culture here in 2019.
  - TomMarius 7y ago
    > That it's borderline "vitriol" or considered offensive says something about culture here in 2019. I'm literally writing this comment from mobile while standing in a crowd near anti-communist protest in Prague. I can't really wrap my mind around this culture change.
    - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      It makes no sense. That's why I'm calling attention to the absurdity of it.
    - pjc50 7y ago
      People are very tired of the mildest bit of social democrat market intervention being denounced as "communism". Like "Nazi" it's a word that has been overused into uselessness, so it gets reflexively downvoted. Besides, communism in the original sense is realistically dead. The Berlin Wall has been down for almost 30 years. So people complaining about it in the present come across as McCarthyite. (I think your original comment would have gone down better if it had been clearer about the past tense - that communism did destroy a lot of small businesses, but this is not an ongoing thing)
simongray 7y ago
It doesn't seem that factual, accepted and well-researched when this article directly contradicts your statement: > In such a skewed retail landscape, many small shops found they could compete by specialising in goods neglected by generalist department stores, especially since retail space was cheap and in plentiful supply behind the Iron Curtain. So while you may be right, you may also be wrong. Maybe it's not as black&white as you make it out to be.
- TomMarius 7y ago
  I think you are misunderstanding the article. Going to the east, these specialised shops directed by the communists, put in place of previous, private ones, have in no way anything to do with the small family businesses you're trying to compare them with. They often literally shot the whole owner family. Everything of this is documented and taught in primary schools all around eastern Europe. All the small businesses in Prague city centre were destroyed, today it's dominated by various minishops with Russian matrioshkas and other scam shit and Vietnamese (they rent it, not their fault) marketplaces selling fake weed and overpriced chips, drinks and cola, and of course by scam exchange places. This used to be space full of small coffee shops, restaurants, specialised family businesses etc in the 1920's. My home city Hradec Kralove (100k citizens) has nearly completely empty wider city centre - since the revolution, no one even wants to do business there. All small business owners were killed or killed by proxy (uranium mines, all of this uranium was then "given" to/taken by the Russians for free), their property confiscated and never recovered (to whom anyways).
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Do you, or does anyone, know enough to give an example of a specialist shop in the East; a button seller, say; that existed prior to the Berlin Wall, that was "destroyed" and what system took it's place to fill the particular need? Like, people still needed fabric and buttons?? Did all single goods-type shops close, like butchers, bakers, etc.. How was supply managed? Presumably those killed refused to give up ownership to the state?
    - 7y ago
fyfy18 7y ago
In my post-Soviet city that doesn't seem to be the case. I know of a shop that just sells car batteries - literally nothing else. They have maybe 30 products in stock, and can order it if you need something else. I don't think they have a web store.

galfarragem 7y ago

Another specialist Berlin shop to the list (modelmaking/art materials and tools) and very famous amoung architects: https://www.modulor.de/en/store-berlin/ https://www.modulor.de/en/store-berlin/

microtherion 7y ago
My sister works there. It's a very nice store, but I wouldn't describe it as hyper specialized. Maybe more of a general stationery/art supplies store, but with a lot of extra depth in some areas (architectural supplies etc).

cylinder 7y ago

If only I wasn't so boring; some interesting retail spaces have opened up in my area.

cirrrrrrus 7y ago

I live in Paris and you can find highly specialized shops too. Some shops only sell about three types of fabric, some others will sell only buttons, a certain type of leather or a special type of ink. I love getting in those shops and meeting the people who are really passionate about their visibly small yet huge niche. It always get wonderful once you start looking at the details.

crispyambulance 7y ago
FWIW, there is likely to be a button shop wherever you got enough seamstresses, tailors, dressmakers and fashion industry. Buttons are really something you have to see and touch in person. As a child, my mother used to take me with her to "Parker Buttons" in downtown Pittsburgh. I remember plunging my arms elbows-deep into containers of shiny black buttons. Nothing else like it in the world.
- DonHopkins 7y ago
  Those Button Men can be pretty intense! https://youtu.be/UBOG5556_0g?t=12m5s https://youtu.be/UBOG5556_0g?t=12m5s Mr. Lossoff always reminds me of another Button Man, Ted Selker, inventor of the distinguished "Joy Button". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhnlaUxsL8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hhnlaUxsL8

AllegedAlec 7y ago

> he worked part-time to build and sell his own ant terrariums, which he calls “formicariums”, from the insect’s Latin name. That's not just what he calls it, that's the official name for them.

arethuza 7y ago

For many many years there was a shop on Victoria street in Edinburgh that appeared to sell nothing but brooms and large balls of string - it was even mentioned in Complicity by Iain Banks. Here are some pics of it: http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_MY_P_S/0_my_photographs_shops_victoria_street_40_me03_jan_1992.htm http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_MY_P_S/0_my_photographs_shops_... Edit: Sad to say that I passed that shop for many years going to uni in the Grassmarket (both as a student and working there) and never went in!

rezeroed 7y ago
"Toilet brushes re-bristled" - never knew that was done, and glad that's not my job.
- yourapostasy 7y ago
  With enough cleaning solvents and disinfectants, any object can be made safe again. There are people who dive into literal sewage retention ponds full of human waste in full SCUBA gear every day to work (clearing obstructions). After reading about that, squeamishness was never an issue for me. As long as it isn't some kind of chemical/biological/radiological warfare agent type substance, or a compound that makes chemists run from a room, I'm fine with it now. That said, I'm absolutely delighted that toilet brushes can be rebristled, and sad that it seems there isn't any place in the US that does this. It irks me that when a brush is retired, a gigantic chunk of plastic heads into the landfill. I have yet to find a low-impact scrubbing solution, and rebristling with some organic-origin bristle that breaks down amending the soil would be ideal. I'd pay 2-3X the cost of a normal throwaway plastic brush to mail in a brush head and get back a rebristled brush head, and wonder if the rebristling could be automated.
  - rezeroed 7y ago
    If you start putting used toilet brushes in the post, I will no longer accept any mail. Are you not confusing biodegradable with repair? Wooden brushes with bamboo bristles or something instead of poo post?

javajosh 7y ago

Yes, there is a balloon shop around the corner. They don't have anything except balloons, but they go deep.

weinzierl 7y ago

Several hyper-specialist shops I know in Munich: - balloon shops seem to do really well because we have several here and every major city seems to have one - foam shop for when you need to fix your upholstery - venetian blind store which only sells the vertical kind - Ketten Wild was a chain shop that only sold chains but chains in all forms and sizes - la porcelaine blanche's slogan is "only china, only white" and that is what they do - elk shop for everything elk related - not that we have any elks in Germany but elks are cute - Schrauben Preisinger sells only screws. They claim they have 30000 different types in their store and this is absolutely credible. A few years ago I was there to get some M1 screws for a project when I witnessed an interesting exchange between another customer and a salesman. The customer had brought a screw with a quite wide thread. It was a straight screw, not tapered and not a wood screw, just with an obviously non-metric thread. He inquired if they had this type of screw in stock. The salesman answered slightly offended that this was a shop for machine screws and they would not sell furniture screws. Also button shops are super useful. If you lose a button you go there with your piece of clothing and they will find a suitable replacement in no time. I never visited the one in Berlin but the one in Munich saved me good money. EDIT: I just remembered two more: - Gummi bear shops are a bit like balloon shops. I don't understand it but there seems to be enough demand to support several of them in a single city. - Berlin's Ampelmann. Maybe doesn't quite fit into the category because it's more of a tourist curiosity. On the other hand: A shop that only sells stuff related to the graphic design of a symbol on the traffic lights of a defunct state is quite hyper-specialized I guess.

dreen 7y ago
Please give more information on the elk shop. I need it... for research (and cant find it on google)
- weinzierl 7y ago
  It was located in Frauenstraße near Isartor [1]. If I remember correctly its name was just "Elchladen". Unfortunately I can't find it either, so it probably closed. [1] https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1343175,11.5814045,19.15z https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1343175,11.5814045,19.15z

urbanjunkie 7y ago

And of course James Smith is a famous umbrella and walking stick shop in the middle of London https://www.james-smith.co.uk/ https://www.james-smith.co.uk/

Myrmornis 7y ago

Surely the obvious question is: is the high street shop really a justified expense? Surely all the sales are online? The more specialized the shop, the less one can hope to fulfill ones sales volume from people in physical cruising distance. The article doesn’t seem to address this, except for acknowledging that most sales are online.

ljcn 7y ago
The answer is probably that shop owners would rather work in a shop that satisfies online orders than in a warehouse.
- saalweachter 7y ago
  The physical shopping radius for a specialty shop is also a lot larger than a generic store. If you have the store to find mid-century burnished widgets at, people might regularly come from a hundred or more miles away when they really need just the right sort of widget, and when they do -- if your stock lives up to the hype -- they will tend to be big customers, buying a lot (since they weren't casually dropping in), being fairly price insensitive (since they have few alternatives for what they need), and repeat customers (since you seldom end up needing a specialty item once). You might still need an online storefront, or you might take phone orders from your regulars, but the clientele of a specialty shop is radically different than the clientele of a generic shop, which relies more on people wandering by and which competes with ten other stores a mile away, and the big box store off the highway.
- pjc50 7y ago
  I think this is exactly it - these stores are now perfect fusion of small online store and small offline store. If you order something online the owner picks it off the shelf and puts it in an envelope - and the online shop can drive traffic to the physical one.
Iv 7y ago
In theory it does not make a lot sense. In practice, I am amazed at how much crap most online webshops are. In a shop I can browse through the wares much easier. I can examine them, look at the size and specs, feel the weight and texture, get ideas. More often than not, crucial specs of the product I am looking at are not available. Dimensions and weights are often missing, I often can't look at more than 5 or 6 articles at the time. Webshops are great when you know exactly what you need. They are hell if your need is "4 or 5 buttons that would look good on that fabric"

bluetomcat 7y ago

Is anyone else failing to see a legitimate need for sticky tape in tens of different colours? What about the shopping experience of the future, when such shops are destined to be the "future of retail"? Suddenly you are now spending an hour choosing between balloons of different shapes and colours or the perfectly matching button for your shirt. It's an illusion of choice, fueling pointless production of variations of the same thing and targeting your attention and time.

jameskegel 7y ago
I’d imagine this line of thinking is what Apple hopes for, people burdened with the luxury of choice who just want someone to tell them what they want.
saalweachter 7y ago
What do you mean "a legitimate need"? Why do people need paint in more than one or two colors? Why do people need multiple styles of clothes, beyond a "summer uniform" and "winter uniform"? Why do people bother to maintain both vi and emacs when only one is necessary? Most of the time, any tape will do, but sometimes you want the perfect paisley to complement your wrapping paper choice. Since most people don't care most of the time, most stores that sell tape won't have more than one or two kinds, so you go to a specialty retailer to find the unusual stuff for unusual circumstances.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Your comment seems well made, and to make a good point. We waste a lot of productivity on providing choice. I don't think pure utilitarianism is the answer, but it seems we could do better. But then, noone needs party balloons at all ...
jdietrich 7y ago
Adhesive tape is an incredibly sophisticated and versatile product. Yes, there are silly products (emoji duct tape) but there are also an immense variety of tapes with uniquely useful properties. https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All-3M-Products/Adhesives-Tapes/?N=5002385+8710676+8711017+3294857497&rt=r3 https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/company-us/all-3m-products/~/All...

gjm11 7y ago

In Cambridge (UK), on an out-of-the-way side street, for many years there was a shop called "Roll On Blank Tape". I never understood how they could possibly do enough business to stay _in_ business, and always suspected that if you asked in just the right way they might sell you some ... not-blank tapes. Boringly, the available evidence suggests that actually it's just that the person who ran the shop was really interested in cassette tape and didn't mind not making any money to speak of.

ben_w 7y ago
From what I’ve seen and heard, that place closed some time between 1999 and 2008, although the shopfront remains unchanged even now. I last went past it in March, dog walking with a friend — and he used to buy tapes there.
pbhjpbhj 7y ago
Like, just audio cassette or all types of blank magnetic tape, or blank tape in general? Like masking-, sello-, elephant-tapes?
- danohuiginn 7y ago
  Just audio cassettes, though they weren't too pure to also sell blank minidiscs and the like.
fyfy18 7y ago
I imagine the premises for a lot of these types of businesses must be inherited. You can probably make enough to live pretty ok from a small business like this, especially if you aren't the sole bread-winner for your family.
fredley 7y ago
Just thinking about Cambridge shops made me sad about the terrible loss of Brian Jordan's music shop http://www.brianjordanmusic.co.uk/closure.asp http://www.brianjordanmusic.co.uk/closure.asp
simonbyrne 7y ago

teddyh 7y ago

I would assume that the decline of specialist shops is strongly correlated with rising rents for storefront properties. But with online shopping on the rise, maybe landlords (outside shopping malls and after some years to pass through the stages of grief) can accept that there just isn’t that much money in rents for storefronts anymore, and that specialist shops thereby can continue to exist. Of course, the risk is that they will just tear it all down and convert it into lofts, office complexes or something instead, leaving nothing except lofts, office complexes and huge malls.

gbear605 7y ago
I don’t know about in Germany, but the huge malls are going the way of the dodo in the US.
- zach_garwood 7y ago
  I briefly worked for a retail company a couple years ago that was getting amazing sweetheart deals on short-term leases in malls because the mall owners almost literally could not give away the space. They are desperate to host just about anything in order to make their mall look less like a ghost town.
- notJim 7y ago
  People say this, but both of the malls I've been to in the past few years (one in Bellevue, WA and one in Chandler, AZ) have been completely packed almost every time. Is it really still true that malls are going away?
  - siidooloo 7y ago
    I believe it’s actually the smaller malls and malls near smaller towns that are dying from oversupply. The giant warehouse style stripmalls have hurt the small malls in the exurbs. Big malls in big cities seem to still be expanding.
  - mediaman 7y ago
    A-class malls are still doing well. The mall you're referring to in Bellevue, where I have also been, is a class-A mall. Class-A malls tend to be in busier, higher wealth, sometimes more urban areas, have best in class furnishings, and have tier-1 national tenants, with many of those tenants catering to more of a premium/luxury consumer. Most B-class or C-class malls, however, are dying.

userbinator 7y ago

This reminds me of when I was in Shenzhen's Huaqiangbei area --- it's mostly electronics, but you can find plenty of shops selling only varieties of one type of product.

SolaceQuantum 7y ago

I also find hyper-specialist shops in america wherever there is still cheap land enough for it. When I used to live in Buffalo, there were small shops- one specifically for new agey "gypsy" clothing, one for bath soap made in house, one for herbs for witchcraft, one that specialized in stones. I really enjoyed those places and miss them now how I live in NYC (although NYC has its own quirks- big gay ice cream is great!)

mattkrause 7y ago
New York City has tons of these too; they’re just generally not well-advertised since they many of them cater to a specific market. There are a few button stores in New York, mostly in the Garment District, but also on the upper east side. There are stores selling all kinds of obscure art supplies, kitchen equipment, and lab gear too. To be fair, I’m not sure exactly where you’d buy a currywurst cushion, but there’s a shop selling bones and stuff near NYU, if you someday decide that your living in room needs more of a Natural History Museum vibe.
- madcaptenor 7y ago
  There used to be a bone store in Berkeley, called The Bone Room. They're online-only now, though, after the death of their founder and presumably also rising rents. (https://www.boneroom.com/about--contact.html https://www.boneroom.com/about--contact.html)
inferiorhuman 7y ago
The difference is that you'll find specialists in Germany even where land isn't super cheap. I remember really enjoying Stuttgart a few years ago because I hadn't seen any supermarkets. I'm sure there's a Lidl and whatnot but instead we stopped by a green grocer, bakery, and butcher for dinner. In Berlin I'm not surprised there's a meat furniture store.
reaperducer 7y ago
When I lived in Seattle there was a kilt store. Chicago had a button store in the last ten years or so, but it is gone. It became a Barneys New York. Roaming through the Nevada desert a few years ago (Tonopah area, I can't remember exactly where) I came across a small town with a book store that sold nothing but old 1940's-1970's cowboy paperbacks. $1 each. I bought 50.

k_bx 7y ago

While it's basically more of a cafe, I really like that a Brownie-specialized place opened here in Kyiv, Ukraine (called "Veterano Brownie", a concept they took from "Veterano Pizza", where only war veterans or forced migrants are hired). Always nice to see that something that you previously perceived as a treat of one type can be developed into a whole mini-company with lots of care and a variety of forms and tastes.

erk__ 7y ago

The sitre of the meat textile shop is pretty interesting: https://aufschnitt.net/ https://aufschnitt.net/

tw1010 7y ago

This doesn't really make sense to me. On the internet hyper-specialisation is obvious since space is virtually unlimited. But in real life, I mean, real estate is limited so why wouldn't darwinian market forces make a shop with product diversity + epsilon out compete a shop with a more niche spectrum of products, until only walmart and such remains?

tim333 7y ago
>The majority of Antstore’s sales take place via the company’s website I think they kind of act as showrooms for online sales.
weinzierl 7y ago
I'm pretty sure that what you described is happening. It's just that the process has not yet been completed. I don't think these shops are "the future of retail" like it says in the article. What another comment said about showrooms makes a lot of sense. Also there are some fringe businesses that will never go online. Portrait photography businesses come to mind. Pharmacies are a thing where I live, because subsidized prescription only drugs can only be sold there. But apart from that I wonder what will happen to all the smaller sales rooms in the inner cities?
mywittyname 7y ago
Product differentiation is much easier in person since you see & can touch the product. Plus having a specialist available to speak with regarding your needs is often valuable. With online purchases, you're limited to pictures, price, technical specs to make decisions.
bluGill 7y ago
Many reasons. First, WalMart doesn't have everything. Only a few people in any city are interested in buying specialty items, it doesn't make sense to WalMart to stock that everywhere when some stores will never have a sale. A specialty store brings in customers from all over the city. A human who knows one product well is very useful. WalMart salesmen don't know their product. Going to a specialist who knows the product well makes sense because you can get advice. Also, WalMart as limited space: the specialist shop will often have the exact thing you need, while WalMart will have at best something similar, for real niche items you can't even get a substitute. For the above to work you need a large enough population. The small hyper-specialist shop only works when there are enough people who will buy from it. Small towns in the middle of nowhere have a specialist store selling only farm equipment, you won't find that in the middle of a big city (you will on the edge). A big city will have specialist stores to support the industry (and hobbyists) in that town. When the item needs to be custom fit you need a store. WalMart can fit glasses, but they don't know anything about pens. I bet many of you didn't know that some pens are custom adjusted to the user - there are enough people who like expensive pens to support pen shop in some cities. Likewise golf clubs, bowling balls...

chris_overseas 7y ago

I've been past a specialist umbrella shop [0] in London hundreds of times and it has always intrigued me, though I have never been inside. I'm not quite sure it's in the same vein as the other speciality shops people are listing here though, since it has been there for almost 200 years and clearly targets the more discerning customer with high quality and bespoke items. [0] https://www.james-smith.co.uk/ https://www.james-smith.co.uk/

ekianjo 7y ago

Nothing too surprising really. The largest the density of people living in the same place, the more very niche businesses find enough folks to generate a livelihood out of it. The only reason why such shops tend to disappear is when rents become too high - but then nowadays they have the opportunity to go online instead. Tokyo has lots of hyper-specialist shops in different areas of the city, too.

theoh 7y ago

It's a trope: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpecializedStore https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpeciali...

Noos 7y ago
Not only is it a trope, UHF satirized this over twenty years ago. Spatula City! https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY
- theoh 7y ago
  That's the image on the TV Tropes page.

dalore 7y ago

> Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... Although in this case I would say YES, that specialist shops are needed to combat Amazon being non specialist.

spectramax 7y ago

Hyper-specialization is everywhere if you ever step into any Asian country. Indians even have last names based on their hyper-specialized occupation. I was in Thailand and I saw a tiny shop whose only job was to take old torn notes and exchange it for a new one by charging a small flat fee. I had an Indian friend that told me that specializations in old cities was also geographically organized. One part of street would only sell pressure cookers while another side would sell watering cans.

blowski 7y ago
> I had an Indian friend that told me that specializations in old cities was also geographically organized. One part of street would only sell pressure cookers while another side would sell watering cans. That’s how London used to be, which is why the area around St Paul’s has roads like “Leather Lane”, “Milk Street”, and “Poultry”.
- fredophile 7y ago
  I found Kowloon to be like this when I was visiting Hong Kong a few years ago. One that stands out in my mind was turning a corner and being on a street that seemed to sell nothing but pet turtles and fish.
  - spectramax 7y ago
    Wow. Did you happen to take pictures? If you do, please share as any photographic insight into Kowloon walled city is highly sought after!
    - fredophile 7y ago
      Kowloon and Kowloon walled city are not the same thing. Kowloon walled city was long gone when I made that trip.
- vkou 7y ago
  Parts of Manhattan are still that way. There's a potted plant street, a fabric street...

dontbenebby 7y ago

>Instead of shutting up shop, Ghouneim relocated to humdrum Wittenau, a suburb of Berlin, and got some tape artists to decorate the facade of the new building. Footfall has naturally decreased, but 80% of his business comes from online sales and regular industrial clients, for whom Klebeband’s four employees cut and colour match tape of all varieties to order. Sounds like they realize that people going "Have you heard of the store that only sells stickytape?" is great buzz marketing generator. I assume they'd need space to store the tape to sell to their online and industrial clients, so why not stack it up next to a counter and make a little side cash from the consumer market? (I also have noticed in Germany they're much more cash-friendly, so I can totally see more people in DE preferring to go to a store and pay cash than submit PII like credit card and home address to purchase some sticky tape)

treve 7y ago
Cash-friendly and bank unfriendly. I lived in Germany for a year and I haven't had to finish a branch so many times in my life as that year.

jamespitts 7y ago

This is a classic case of what happens when key parts of doing business have a low-cost and low barrier to entry. Diversity and interestingness take hold.

abruzzi 7y ago

I don't know if its still there, but west Philadelphia (somewhere around 49th St.) had a Carrot Cake store. They made the best carrot cake I've ever had, and made nothing else.

MrZongle2 7y ago

FTA: "This is Antstore, the world’s first specialist ant shop, a business with around two dozen employees, a glass-cutting workshop, plastic and plaster modelling studios and a full-time social media manager." This sounds like a Monty Python sketch brought to life.

dashmatte 7y ago

Brooklyn has been doing it since about 2005 however the difference is that they do it more of an industrial scale to sell online qaned top other retailers. Commercial rent is too expensive in Brooklyn to do it on the retail side. I think the a special thing about what's going on in Germany is that the rent must be affordable even in high foot-traffic areas for them to do this.

rsynnott 7y ago

In Dublin, there was a shop that mostly just sold yeast until recently: https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property/johnny-ronan-made-an-offer-they-had-no-difficulty-refusing-1.3396814 https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-property... It always looked closed; I walked past it for a decade or so every day without realising that it was still in business. And then there’s the top floor of Stephens Green shopping center, which mostly just contains very strange specialised shops, with no visible customers.

anbop 7y ago

With online retail, brick-and-mortar retail is no longer useful just for aggregating things into a location that you can go to buy them, except for things that can't be shipped for cost or time reasons. So the value of brick and mortar retail becomes the ability to get you exactly what you need, and this often involves human expertise which by its nature specializes. The button store on the Upper East Side in New York City has a lady there who just hands you the button you need. You show her your jacket where the button got caught in a cab door, and she doesn't even have to hunt -- she walks to one of her thousands of teeny drawers, and pulls out your exact button or something pretty damn close. In the article, the scotch tape guy knows exactly what scotch tape you need, and that's the reason for his store existing. He could as easily have an office where he then orders you the tape online for drone delivery.

gpjanik 7y ago

The headline asks: Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... No. The Internet is.