
The hyper-specialist shops of Berlin - moreentropy
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/29/are-the-hyper-specialist-shops-of-berlin-the-future-of-retail
======
weinzierl
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.

~~~
legulere
Even the 75000 inhabitant city I live in has a balloon shop, but also one for
brushes. Also in the neighboring city there used to be a shop just for rubber.

~~~
1337biz
I imagine the margins for balloon shops incredibly good.

~~~
microtherion
They keep most of their inventory uninflated so storage requirements are not
that big and the designs keep a long time, and for non-specialists, it's
generally not worth keeping bottled Helium around, so it's a pretty decent
business I suppose.

~~~
pnutjam
I buy my inflated balloons at the "dollar store", which is a good deal since
they are 3.99 or more at the grocery store.

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arethuza
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_...](http://www.edinphoto.org.uk/0_MY_P_S/0_my_photographs_shops_victoria_street_40_me03_jan_1992.htm)

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!

~~~
elorant
Wow this web site is like we're back in 1996. Love it. Reminded me how simple
was the web back then.

~~~
dmix
Very usable and simple web design with obvious blue links and clearly defined
content areas. Everything but the header/footer navigation is great, including
the logical street-based interior navigation.

The HTML source is a mix of old / new HTML, which shows the author has been
updating by hand for years and improved their skill (slightly).

~~~
qznc
A great submission for my subreddit :)
[https://old.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/comments/bjmkqp/edinphot...](https://old.reddit.com/r/SpartanWeb/comments/bjmkqp/edinphoto_home_page_the_history_of_photography_in/)

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teddyh
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
I don’t know about in Germany, but the huge malls are going the way of the
dodo in the US.

~~~
notJim
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?

~~~
mediaman
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.

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spectramax
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
> 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
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
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
Kowloon and Kowloon walled city are not the same thing. Kowloon walled city
was long gone when I made that trip.

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cirrrrrrus
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
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
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)

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dontbenebby
> _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
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.

------
gjm11
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.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Like, just audio cassette or all types of blank magnetic tape, or blank tape
in general? Like masking-, sello-, elephant-tapes?

~~~
danohuiginn
Just audio cassettes, though they weren't too pure to also sell blank
minidiscs and the like.

------
galfarragem
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
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).

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SolaceQuantum
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
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
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))

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AllegedAlec
> 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.

------
ekianjo
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.

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k_bx
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.

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tw1010
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?

~~~
bluGill
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...

~~~
subpixel
> For the above to work you need a large enough population

I think you also need a sanely designed city with effective public transport.
For example, Atlanta or Charlotte have millions of people, including hobbyists
and artists and enthusiasts, but I don't think many of the shops in the linked
article would survive in a strip mall.

~~~
bluGill
Not true on path counts.

You don't need a sane design, you need a large enough population. Walmart
needs to be every few miles because if they aren't people will go to a
competitor who is closer. For specialty stores though there is no competition.
Customers often will drive for over an hour to get there and put up with a
really bad location because that is the only choice.

I have seen such stores in strip malls - not the new ones, but the old almost
dead ones often find a new lease on life by renting to specialty stores that
bring in people from all over.

~~~
nonford150
Gail K fabrics in Atlanta. 2 locations and you can find any type of fabric
under the sun. Just so little competition.

------
rsynnott
In Dublin, there was a shop that mostly just sold yeast until recently:
[https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-
property...](https://www.irishtimes.com/life-and-style/homes-and-
property/johnny-ronan-made-an-offer-they-had-no-difficulty-refusing-1.3396814)

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.

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theoh
It's a trope:
[https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpeciali...](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SeverelySpecializedStore)

~~~
Noos
Not only is it a trope, UHF satirized this over twenty years ago. Spatula
City!

[https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY](https://youtu.be/2XbCWmY0eqY)

~~~
theoh
That's the image on the TV Tropes page.

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userbinator
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.

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anbop
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.

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MrZongle2
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.

------
abruzzi
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.

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chris_overseas
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/)

------
Myrmornis
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.

~~~
Iv
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"

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Just trying to find things like washers online had been a nightmare for me
before -- how can they list the external diameter and not internal, how can
they not say what material it is, or the thickness!??

I ended up trawling a few local plumbing supply stores and was really
surprised how few washers they had, about the fourth store had a few random
open boxes they let me rummage through and we agreed a price. It was
unexpectedly difficult.

I've found similar problems getting screws I want (for a ceramics kiln). Gave
up and used the best thing I could find in Screwfix (which aren't that good).

------
erk__
The sitre of the meat textile shop is pretty interesting:
[https://aufschnitt.net/](https://aufschnitt.net/)

------
jamespitts
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.

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

------
gpjanik
The headline asks: Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of
retail?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

No. The Internet is.

------
dalore
> Are the hyper-specialist shops of Berlin the future of retail?
> [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headlines)

Although in this case I would say YES, that specialist shops are needed to
combat Amazon being non specialist.

------
TomMarius
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?

~~~
ricardobeat
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?

~~~
paublyrne
Several of the shops mentioned in the article are in Kreuzberg which was in
the west before the wall came down but now has more in common with other
eastern districts like Friererichshain or Neukolln than ones like
Charlottenburg in the west. These kind of quirky workshop shops or independent
shops are more common in those eastern districts I think than in the west now,
which has more of the usual sorts of big high street chains.

~~~
inferiorhuman
Kreuzberg was also one of the poorest parts of West Berlin and is now home to
all the hipsters (and uses East German Ampelmännchen if memory serves).

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

------
bluetomcat
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.

~~~
saalweachter
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.

