district – What will be under the Christmas tree for the children in the district at Christmas? “Lots of board games,” believes Florian Bachmann, an expert in this kind of thing. “Also Lego, Playmobil and Barbies. The classics.” In short, the same procedure as every year – at least when it comes to gifts. Otherwise, however, it could be another unusual and in some ways unpleasant Christmas – because of the pandemic.
It is currently raging worse than ever in this country, the number of infections is exploding, which is why the fear of déjà vu in retail is bypassing – also with Florian Bachmann, whose family runs the Vordermaier toy store in Ottobrunn. “If the Christmas business broke down again this year, it would be fatal,” he says. “After all, that’s when we do a lot of our business.” Although his company has an online shop and has been offering a “Click and Collect” service since the lockdown last year. But he could not survive on that alone, especially since one is fighting “against the really big ones” on the Internet, as Bachmann puts it with a view to Amazon and all the other big online retailers. And so in a conversation with the toy retailer from Ottobrunn, the sentence that Anne-Monika Schön says almost word for word in her jewelry store in Unterschleißheim – just like Hans Forster in his sports store in Grünwald and Michaela Rüth from Bücher Sirius in Garching. This sentence reads: “We can only hope that there will not be another lockdown in the Christmas business.”
Anne-Monika Schön, who runs a jewelry store in Unterschleißheim, hopes that there will not be another lockdown.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
“You just have to look to Austria.”
Christmas as a festival of hope – this is more true of retail than ever this year. In many places, fear is increasingly mixed with hope. “You just have to look to Austria, where there is now a lockdown again,” says Anne-Monika Schön, who also heads the Bezirksstrasse advertising association in Unterschleißheim. After the measures in the neighboring country often served as a blueprint for Bavaria and Germany in the past, the jewelry dealer also expects further restrictions in this country. Which would be all the more serious since, in their experience, the Christmas business is “very focused on December”. However, Anne-Monika Schön emphasizes at the same time: “There is no doom and gloom with us. We take it as it comes – and then make the best of it.”
Michaela Rüth, who works in the Garching bookstore Sirius, says politics should have acted earlier.
(Photo: Stephan Rumpf)
This is exactly what they did at the Sirius bookstore in Garching during the lockdown of the previous year. “We offered all kinds of sales, and we got on our bikes to deliver,” recalls Michaela Rüth, long-time employee and the face of the store. Despite all efforts, the failure of the Christmas business also tore a sales gap here. “That is why everyone is now concerned that we will have to shut down again,” says Rüth, who has been checking the infection numbers in the morning for months. Their development, plus the warnings of many experts, should have shaken politics a long time ago, says Michaela Rüth. “But unfortunately nothing was done. The choice was certainly detrimental.” Will the restrictions that have now been introduced turn things around? The bookseller is a bit skeptical about that. After all, she says, the Christmas business has picked up earlier this year than usual. The first customers hunted for gifts had already been in their store at the beginning of November.
Florian Bachmann reports something similar from Ottobrunn. The toy retailer attributes the early start of the Christmas business to two things: on the one hand, concerns about a new lockdown and, on the other hand, media reports about delivery bottlenecks and shortages of goods. The latter was also felt by his company, says Bachmann. “That’s why we stocked up earlier and much more than usual.” Bachmann admits that this is associated with a greater risk in these Corona times – on the one hand. But on the other hand it is so, he says: “If we have nothing, then we cannot sell anything.”
Word has not yet got around that the slopes are open
So now he hopes to bring his goods to parents, grandmas and grandpas in December – as does Hans Forster, who runs two sports shops in Unterhaching and Grünwald. He, too, remembers the previous year and the effects of the lockdown with horror. At that time, his company “positioned itself strongly online, which enabled us to prevent the worst,” says Forster. “But that never outweighs what we sell in the store.” So far this year things have gone quite well, reports the head of the family company. However, he is worried about the ski business, which is so important to him. After all, the 2G plus rule applies to cable cars in this country, which robs many of the desire to ski. And that the slopes in Austria are open despite the lockdown, “that hasn’t got around so much,” says Forster.
And so this conversation ends on the subject of hope. In his stores, the Christmas business starts around October, on the first Saturday of Advent it is usually still quiet before things get busy on the following two weekends, says Forster. Will it be the same this year? “We all,” says Hans Forster, “naturally hope so”.