It certainly takes a lot of courage to become self-employed. But it also takes a lot of courage to let go of what you have built up over the years. Ulrike Soré, Herrsching’s best-known fashion icon, is experiencing this letting go these days. For a good year now she has been thinking about giving up her business “Mode Mosaic” in Seestrasse and finally having more time for her family again. She calls the past time a lengthy process until she was able to make this decision: it will be over at the end of 2022. After 32 years.
When she talks about it, her eyes get a little wet. “Yes,” she says, “I stop with a laughing, but also a very crying eye.” Maybe that’s why she ordered herself a piecemeal farewell. She downsized her business last weekend. After the conversion, a real estate agent will move in with his office in the place where, in addition to fine brand labels, she also sells her own imported Italian fashion at lower prices. Sounds a bit sober when you consider the esprit that has prevailed in these rooms so far.
Even men enjoy watching her videos – mostly in the evening when people are in bed
Indeed, the “Fashion Mosaic” is far more than some boutique in an affluent lakeside community. The shop is a meeting place, people are here, customers and salespeople tell each other private stories. Or discuss politics. Most recently, of course, again and again about Corona. For Ulrike Soré, her decision to stop altogether at the end of 2022 has nothing to do with the pandemic. On the contrary. She managed to survive wonderfully in business even during the lockdown – a time when fashion stores like hers had to remain closed. During this time she was very involved in the retail trade for the Herrschinger trade association “Wir” and simply reinvented herself. For example, she has discovered the world of social media, especially Instagram. She is now in front of the camera almost every day: “Hello, my dear customers” are usually her first words in the videos, which live from not always being perfect. Your followers obviously appreciate that, because their number is constantly growing. Not only women are among them, even men like to watch the videos, “usually in the evening when people are already in bed,” says Soré. Her customers, who not only come from Herrsching and the surrounding area, but also come from far away, would always tell her or even write how great the male interest in female fashion is.
As soon as she talks about it, the phone rings. A doctor from Gersthofen calls and orders a shopping voucher for his wife. One could almost say that this was agreed upon. But it’s not: “He’s been doing it twice a year for a long time.” Another customer who is trying on a branded skirt with a colorful print and a turquoise cashmere top seems quite familiar with Soré. As it turns out, she used to live in Herrsching and was one of the first customers in the shop. She’s been living in Geneva for a few years, but she still comes to the Ammersee to shop and for private conversations with the business owner: we’ve known each other for a long time and obviously now we know each other quite well. And then there are the friends from Cham, for example, who come to Herrsching every year to get new clothes. Soré shows a photo of the two from the early days of her shop: “I’m always happy when they come.” Of course, you know each other by name and have been on first-name terms for a long time. Of course, clothing is more than just appearances, but an expression of an inner attitude. At least that’s Soré’s view: “If you want to sell something, you have to sell yourself first,” she says. And be there with passion.
She owes her sense of aesthetics to her mother: “I always know what a customer could look like”
Soré was convinced from the start that her boutique could be a success: “There was nothing like it in Herrsching before. And I’ve always dreamed of my own shop – either for flowers or fashion.” She completed her training as a retail clerk in the now long-closed and demolished sports shop Henle and worked in the Herrschinger shop for many years together with her mother Gerti Wimmer. In addition, she completes an examination to become a trainer. Then she finds out about a planned new building, diagonally opposite: retail is planned there. And Soré strikes, rents two shops at once, which she merges, and later a third will join the ranks. She quits her job a year before completion, her mother follows six months later. “She supported me here for many years. She was in the shop until I was 65 and did my bookkeeping until I was 70.” Mother Gerti is now 80. “I owe her my sense of aesthetics: I always know what might suit a customer, what size she wears and the like,” she describes what she also cherishes and cares for in private.
Because Ulrike Soré is not only a real sales talent, she is also a very talented painter. She has already furnished medical practices and tax offices with her paintings: they are abstract, modern works, a little avant-garde and minimalist. In other words: a style that she also appreciates in fashion. But in recent years she has hardly gotten to paint, she says. “I just had too much on my mind, day and night my mind was only on business.”
Ulrike Soré has already found a successor for her shop, and her long-term employees Carmen Hautmann (left) and Karin Bernhard (right) will be taken on.
(Photo: Arlet Ulfers)
She doesn’t want that anymore. She has already found a successor for her boutique, but does not want to name her yet. Except that she will also take on all “her girls”, as Soré affectionately calls her long-term employees. And then she talks about the list that she writes every day with all the things that she has personally planned for the next year. At the top is the name of her life partner Robert: “For my 60th birthday this year on June 28th, I gave myself the opportunity to spend more time with him and to enjoy life with him again.” Robert Kroth is the name of the man at her side. He was a businessman himself, had 15 fabric shops in the region and is 20 years older than Soré. The two met two decades ago while shopping in a butcher’s shop and have been inseparable ever since. It is he who supported Soré in many ways: he always accompanied her when she went shopping in Italy. “You can’t do something like this in the long run without someone like him. And I want to give him back the time he gave me over the years.”