“Stop! Out! Everything has to go!” These are the words with which customers are greeted in the traditional Starnberg store “Schuh Linse” on the last days before closing. Red balloons with percent signs dangle from the ceiling, discount posters vying for attention with the Christmas decorations. In between: all kinds of shoes for lacing, for slipping on, for sunbathing. The sale will continue up to and including this Saturday on December 18th, from Monday the shop will be closed. Or to put it more succinctly, as it says on one of the posters: “Clearance sale due to business closure. Everything has to go!”
Clearance sale in the “Schuh Linse” shop on Wittelsbacherstraße in Starnberg.
(Photo: Nila Thiel)
Hans Linse, owner and managing director of the company, is 52 years old. He wears a shirt, jeans and sporty shoes when he tells the story of the family business: His great-great-grandfather was a shoemaker, even before the First World War. His great-grandfather and grandfather were also shoemakers. The family company has existed in Starnberg since 1949. Shoes have been sold at the current location on Wittelsbacherstrasse since 1969; In 2005, the current managing director finally took over the business from his father.
Hans Linse assumes 6,000 to 7,000 pairs of shoes that he currently still has. That sounds like a lot, but normally it would be between 22,000 and 25,000 pairs, explains the owner. The upcoming closure of the business makes him “very, very sad” as he says. Shoes in all colors – red, green, brown, black – and in a wide variety of designs are still standing next to each other on the shelves. Sorted by size and provided with discount information. At the same time, the end of the shop on Wittelsbacherstraße in no way means the end of shoe sales.
From now on, Hans Linse will shift his business more to online trading. Selling via the Internet is not new territory for the managing director, after all, there has been an online shop of his own for about ten years. In addition, shoes from Starnberg are also sold via Amazon and Zalando, among others, Lens reports. In particular, sales via Amazon have changed over time, he says. At first it was fun, but it became more and more a “one-sided torment”: Rules had been tightened, more and more was demanded. Overall, according to the lens, there is an average return rate of 60 to 70 percent for online sales. In Starnberg, brown boxes as tall as a man are currently stacked with returned goods. The retail salesman calls free returns a “broken neck” for dealers.
Parcels with returns are piling up behind owner Hans Linse.
(Photo: Nila Thiel)
Nevertheless, he wants to expand his online business further. Advertising is an issue, as is the renewal of the infrastructure and the search for a special type of online customer contact. In addition to the digital business, the branch with the shop in Gauting will also be retained. But why is the store in Starnberg closing at all? Hans Linse gives several reasons for this. On the one hand, the manufacturers are no longer partners, and large companies often no longer deliver what special customers want. In addition, some manufacturers would become self-sellers on the Internet. On the other hand, there would be the problem that Linse can hardly find any more sales staff. In addition, fewer customers would come. And finally, the building, which is owned by Hans Linse himself, is to be demolished and rebuilt. Overall, the situation was recently “no longer acceptable”.
What will happen after the demolition of the house, the former Starnberg cinema? “A beautiful house, of course,” says Linse with conviction. That doesn’t mean a comeback for the family company’s shoe store, because the 52-year-old also says: “I can rule out that a shoe lens comes in.”