RETROWURST: Bionade October 2006

 

I wrote a piece about Bionade in October 2006, just as the soft drink brand with a difference seemed to demonstrate that “the only way is up.” Sales in 2004 had been 7 million bottles, in 2005 20 million and 2006 was looking to at least triple that.

Rather cheesily, I wrote that “this is the story of what happens if you follow your dreams, believe in your product and stay true to your roots.”

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Rather a lot of people in Germany are nursing hangovers at the moment, following the Oktoberfest and the celebrations in connection with the Tag der Deutschen Einheit on 3^rd October. And what better way to nurse a hangover could there be than with something healthy, refreshing and German? This is the success story of a new German brand – Bionade. 

 

Bionade is a non-alcoholic drinks brand that has taken Germany by storm in the last few years, interestingly, with very little traditional advertising investment. The story of Bionade is the story of what you can do if you follow your dream, believe in your product and stay true to your roots.

 

The Bionade story started twenty years ago, in the little 3,000 inhabitant town of Ostheim vor der Rhön, which is in the North-Eastern part of Bavaria: brewery country. In this area, there are, or were, numerous small, family-owned breweries. The Braumeister of one such brewery was the inventor of Bionade. The Peter-Brauerei was struggling in the 1980s and was not far-off bankruptcy. As a desperate measure, the family opened a disco on the brewery grounds which just about kept the business afloat. As he pulled pints – or half-litres – for bored young locals until 5am, the Braumeister Dieter Leipold dreamed of inventing a drink which would not just keep the brewery going but give the whole family a comfortable existence.

 

Herr Leipold’s dream was of an alcohol-free refreshing drink that would be like “Fanta without chemicals”. Using his skill in the processes of brewing and fermentation and his knowledge of organic ingredients, he started to experiment with fermenting organic barley and in 1995, Bionade was born.

 

The family were proud of their product and wanted to offer the licence to other breweries to ferment the product themselves, using their existing skills and equipment but, in the early days, no-one was particularly interested. So, the Peter-Brauerei started producing Bionade themselves. The other breweries are probably kicking themselves now, as Bionade has been a runaway success in the last three years with 7m bottles produced in 2004, 22m in 2005 and a projected 66m for 2006. The brand is estimated to be worth €100m.

 

Bionade is a simple enough idea – a soft drink made from fermenting organic barley and malt, then diluting and adding organic sugar and concentrated juice. The drink comes in a variety of flavours – Elderberry, Herb, Lychee and Ginger-Orange. Bionade got its real breakthrough in 1998 when the owner of the über-trendy Gloria Bar in Hamburg discovered the drink at a Gastronomic Fair and started offering it to the movers and shakers who frequented his bar. In fact, most of the marketing that Bionade has carried out is non-traditional. There were no glossy T.V campaigns, rather, the brand has relied on word-of-mouth, personal recommendation (face-to-face and via Internet) and guerilla activity (promotions in “happening” bars).

 

The success has been phenomenal: sometime last year, Bionade crossed from being cult to being mainstream but has lost none of its appeal. The major grocery retailers even dropped their normal listings fee, so keen were they to get Bionade on their shelves. 

 

The Peter-Brauerei is finding it difficult to cope with demand, but plans are afoot to substantially expand their premises. Perhaps one heart-warming side to the story is that success does not appear to have gone to the family’s heads. Unlike others in their position, they have not yet been tempted to sell-out, even though it is known that Coca-Cola has offered them a substantial sum. Herr Leipold still owns the patent and his wife and stepsons run the company. Behind their decision not to sell seems to be an acknowledgement of the jobs and prosperity that they have brought to their little corner of Germany and certainly the future plans seem to be to support local farmers by buying all the ingredients from the Rhön area and to expand abroad slowly and step-by-step.

 

Bionade is a drink that not only tastes good, but one has to feel good on hearing the success story of Herr Leipold and his family.

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It’s been a long time since I’ve had a bottle of Bionade. I may have had one last year - I can’t really remember. 2007 proved to be the peak in the brand’s sales, at 200 million bottles. In 2008, the brand had a price rise (maybe to fund the first real ad campaign, which was along the lines of The official beverage of a better world).

Sales started declining. In 2011, they were down to 60 million bottles. The brand was part- and then completely sold off to Radeberger in 2012. Dieter Leipold died in 2014. 

Plenty of factors contributed to Bionade’s fall from grace. Too many wannabes, trying to get in on the act? A perception that the brand had sold out? 

The brand made a fresh start in 2018, with its purchase by the Hassia Group. I couldn’t find any recent sales figures, but there seem to be signs of a slow comeback. Apparently sales did well during Covid and the brand is riding a little - shock horror - retro wave at the moment. 

And yet ... I feel as if it’s lost its quirkiness and bite. Ice Tea, Mate and various “cloudy” versions have joined the flavour line-up. The brand slogan is translated as The most honest fizzy drinks in the world. Bionade: Honestly Good.

But I still have a soft spot for this soft drink. It was new in Germany when I was. It was a sustainability pioneer among brands and had a well-deserved Golden Age around the time of the football Sommermärchen. I do hope it can find a sunny future.

Extrawurst finds its (AI) voice

 

I’m trying to keep up, honestly I am. But sometimes I just have to rely on younger (more switched on?) friends and colleagues to point me in the direction of the AI gizmos developed in the last 5 minutes.

I do very vaguely remember being very excited when I first saw Powerpoint back at Saatchis in the last century. You may find that laughable, but it’s true. Having said that, I wasn’t overkeen to get down and grapple with Powerpoint myself - that took another decade and necessity (self-employment).

But this time, when one of my strategy network chaps started waxing lyrical about Google Notebook LM , I thought I’d better get my hands dirty.

Mr Trump thinks they’re eating cats and dogs in Springfield, but the fact is that Google Notebook LM has eaten Extrawurst. I’m not sure how many posts it ingested before it could take no more, but I hope you’ll forgive me the self-indulgence of showing off the results.

There’s this for starters:

The provided text consists of a series of blog posts written by Sue Imgrund, who is a British strategic planner living in Germany. The posts explore a range of topics, from the circular economy to the German school system, using a blend of personal anecdotes and observations about German society. Imgrund frequently draws on her experiences as a mother in Germany, and often references trends and cultural phenomena within the German context. The posts offer a unique perspective on German culture and societal changes, providing insights into consumer behaviour, marketing trends, and the evolution of specific brands and products.

And, for the main course, something that really stopped me in my tracks. A sort of podcast thing. Some of the segways are a bit questionable, but, blimey ...

And for dessert? Can’t fit any more in for now, but do come back later ...

BILLY and the circular book club

 

Pre-owned is growing like nobody’s business. Second-hand clothing, for example, was worth $141 bn in 2021 and will likely reach $230 bn this year, with an estimate of hitting $350 bn by 2028. 

IKEA, whose 20th century war-cry in the UK was “Chuck out your Chintz” is now a paragon of sustainable thinking and doing - and strives to be a circular company by 2030. Joining the IKEA Buy-Back Service is a peer-to-peer marketplace, IKEA Preowned. It’s starting off in Madrid, but aims to roll out globally in the next few months. This is a good example of how AI is helping make good ideas a reality. 

And what better way to celebrate your new-old BILLY bookcase than to fill it with a few new-old books? But don’t sleepwalk your automatic pilot to Amazon. There’s a new way now which benefits both indie bookshops and authors. It’s called Bookloop and it has been set up by Bookshop.org partnering with the Society of Authors and the Authors’ Licensing and Collecting Society. This means that a % of royalties will go to authors - something that Amazon wouldn’t dream of doing.

All aboard the literary carousel and off we go!

I wonder if you’ll find this one there?

RETROWURST: Women September 2006

 

Now and again, I find something in the Retrowurst files that I genuinely can’t remember writing. A symptom of ageing brain? I’m not convinced, as much of the category and brand-related stuff seems to have been filed away in a readily accessible place. Discounters to drugstores, beers to burgers. Maybe there’s an element of denial at play, as these pieces tend to be about social issues rather than marketing and brand communications. But what they have in common is that, reading them back nearly two decades later, they feel as if they hail from a different world.

This piece, taking the not-particularly-niche subject of “women”, used two self-help type books (one light in tone and tongue-in-cheek, the other sadly not) to introduce the theme of the lot of women, especially mothers, in Germany in the early 2000s. 

Does anyone remember Das Eva Prinzip by Eva Herman or Das Uschi Prinzip by Meike Rensch-Bergner? I wonder if the books are even still in print ...

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A well-known news reader and TV presenter is causing a storm here in Germany with a book that very few people have yet read but that on which almost everyone has an opinion to offer. The lady in question is called Eva Herman and she has called her book “Das Eva-Prinzip”. It really doesn’t matter one jot if you’ve never heard of Frau Herman as she and her book only really play a catalytic role in re-lighting a fire that has been smoldering away here for years.

 

In “Das Eva Prinzip”, apparently (as I also haven’t read it as the publication date seems to keep moving backwards and forwards like a silly girl who can’t make up her mind), Frau Herman sets out the case that feminism was a big mistake and has only led to women being unhappy, denying their innate womanliness and losing out on having children. It is a call to recognize that men are men, women are women, and men should be out working or hunting and bringing home the bacon and Bratwurst while women should stay at home and look after the children. If we all stuck to the way things should be, a lot more children would be born in Germany, and it would be a much happier place.

 

This jolly little tome, incidentally, is hot on the heels of another sort of Prinzip, “Das Uschi Prinzip”, which was a sort of German version of “The Rules”, giving tips and advice to young women on how the “catch the man of their dreams” by using their womanly wiles to the full rather than behaving like some sort of aggressive second-rate man. (See www.uschi-und-uschi.de where the author has made a whole concept out of this, offering seminars, workshops and the like!)

 

But let’s get back to Frau Herman. Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to have lived her own life so far according to her own principles and one can only imagine that she has written the book out of the kindness of her heart to stop young women from making the same foolish choices and mistakes that she did. Eva Herman studied for a career in hotel management and moved into journalism and TV. She has already written a number of books on such subjects as breastfeeding and how to get your child to sleep through the night (A sort of German Gina Ford.). In between she has gone through four husbands and has one child from the third of these. Just the sort of person that you want to have telling you how to run your life!

 

Some commentators have gone as far as to say that Frau Herman’s book has nothing to do with German society as a whole but is her own personal outpouring or sort of therapy to still her longing for a perfect family life that seems never to be satisfied. Eva Herman’s father died when she was only 6, her mother worked and it seems that, to compound this unhappiness, little Eva was not breastfed.

 

Whether we choose to agree with her or not, Eva Herman’s book argues for one solution to one of the main issues that is facing Germany in the 21^st century: one of the largest countries in the E.U also has the lowest birthrate at just 1.35. The future economic implications of this are clear so maybe we shouldn’t criticize Frau Herman too much, whatever her motives, in at least addressing the issue and presenting one way forward (or backward, depending on your perspective!).

 

There is a strange paradox in Germany whereby men and women have equal opportunities as long as the women are childless. In the school and study years, girls are even ahead of boys in terms of academic qualifications: there are more girls than boys with Abitur, which is like German A-Levels and it is expected that, by 2010, more women will go on to further education than men. But it seems that more and more intelligent and well-qualified young women are opting out of having a family:

 

26% of 37-40 years old German women are childless.

33.5% of women with further education in Germany are childless.

42% of women born in 1960 who have higher education are childless.

 

The reason for this is not, perhaps, as Eva Herman suggests, that these young women are making a mistake by pursuing a career, but more because German society in its structure and attitude makes it extremely difficult for women to have a career and a family. Structurally, it starts with the availability of pre-kindergarten childcare which is almost non-existent. Women are encouraged not to go back to work for the first three years (they are not financially rewarded but are at least assured of a job when and if they go back, although the job may bear little resemblance to the one that they left.) It is not unusual for those women that can to plan their children at 3-yearly intervals so that they can start the next round of Erziehungsurlaub as soon as the last one finishes. Employers, with odd exceptions, aren’t exactly welcoming when women come back, and one gets the feeling that a woman who comes back and works part-time is resented as a cost who probably needs re-training and who almost certainly is going disappear punctually each day rather than being appreciated for what she can bring to enrich the company.

 

You may have noticed “part-time” there. Why can’t these women come back and do a full-time job, you may wonder. The answer lies in the German school system, another example of an element of society that has not kept pace with the modern world. The fact is that in Germany, most children, from the age of 6-19, only attend school in the mornings. It is expected that someone will collect them at lunchtime, feed them, supervise their homework (which also starts at age 6) and then organize and ferry them around to any sports or hobbies in the afternoon. While most UK schools have sports teams, children in Germany have to join a club independent of the school to play football, hockey or whatever.

 

Some day-care places are available for primary school children, but these are few and far between, and even then, these places tend to be until 2 or 3 o’clock and only if you are very lucky, for a “whole day” which usually means until 4:30 or so. Priority is given to single mothers and cases of financial hardship, not to “dual earners”. With this kind of system in place and no signs of change in the near future, it is no wonder that many bright young women are choosing career over children. And if the system itself wasn’t bad enough, the overwhelming attitude from society in general doesn’t make things any better. There is an expression that seems only to exist in Germany – Rabenmutter – literally “Raven Mother” for any woman that dares to think that she might be able to carry on her career and let her children play happily and supervised by professionals in the company of other children until the late hour of 4pm! Why ravens should be party to this sort of insult is beyond me – there seems to be no biological basis for this and one would have thought that maybe a cuckoo was a better analogy. But perhaps the Germans just love their cuckoo clocks too much to use the bird’s name as an insult!

 

Interestingly, IKEA have timed their latest advertising campaign here impeccably to fit in with this controversy. Posters have appeared around the cities with provocative messages such as “Women must combine household, children and career!”, “Women who want children must give up their career!” and “Men must go to work, women must change nappies!” This is all a teaser, of course for the IKEA way of a more individual and comfortable life at home, whatever way you choose to live, work and have a family. And that’s the key to it, of course. German women don’t need any more Principles from Eva, Uschi and the rest, just flexibility in the system and support and tolerance from society to run their lives in the way that suits them.

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Eighteen years later, many of the mums I knew from the Elterbeirat or Kinderturnen are now Omas. And yes, that is reflected in the German birthrate. The lot of working mums has improved a little, with more Kindergarten places available, for children aged 1-3 as well as the 3 - 6 traditional age group. With increased female leadership in politics and business, and fathers playing a bigger role in Erziehung, society attitudes are shifing. Slowly, but shifting never-the-less.

The birth rate reached its low point a couple of years after I wrote this article, in 2008. It crept up a little, due to increased immigration, but has crept down again in recent years, although not below the 2008 low point.

The rate of childlessness rose up to around 2012, but seems to have stabilised, with around a 20% incidence of childlessness amongst all cohorts born 1966 - 1977 (women currently aged 47 - 58). But the rate is much lower amongst women with a low level of education - at around 11%.

And what of Uschi and Eva? 

Meike Rensch-Bergner is still writing, and also busy coaching, podcasting and running businesses connected with sewing, tailoring and body-positivity in general. 

As for Eva Herman, well, she was sacked from her prominent position as a news anchor by ARD in 2007. She made some unwise remarks about gender roles in Nazi Germany and has now drifted into writing and podcasting outside of the mainstream on Telegram. Topics cover everything from politics and gender roles to spirituality and health.

I haven’t ventured in to see if she’s got anything worth saying, or whether it’s all conspiracy theories and bonkers rants. But then again, I never read her book, either.

  

Seek - and WHAT will you find?

 

Something has flickered at the edge of my attention for the last few weeks when I’ve been on Amazon. Up to today, my brain had noted “oh, there’s what looks like an AI summary of reviews” and I hadn’t bothered to read further.

But today I had a look. The feature is headed “customers say” and is “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.” I started with a music stand I’d bought a couple of years back for £14.99. Here’s what the AI rehashed from thousands of reviews:

Customers say

Customers appreciate the value, ease of folding, and ease of assembly of the product. They mention it works well, is easy to put up, and adjust for all heights. Customers also like its lightweight design. However, some customers have mixed opinions on its sturdiness.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

My pernickety side would probably take issue with some of this, but it’s useful enough for a relatively low-price, functional purchase.

But how would the AI fare with something more literary? Amazon did start out in books after all, whatever their plans for world domination.

I took a book I read last year which, to fit the topic, features a robot as the main protagonist: Klara and the Sun, by Kazuo Ishiguro:

Customers say

Customers find the prose wonderful, flawless, and incredibly readable. They also find the story interesting and engaging. Opinions are mixed on the character development, with some finding them well-drawn and unforgettable, while others say they're thin and not satisfactorily described. Reviews are mixed also on the boring plot. Occupants have mixed feelings about the emotional content, with those who find it sad and heartbreaking, while those who say it's unconvincing.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews 

Who are those “occupants”? Something to do with inter-planetary craft? This bland and badly-composed summary would hardly help me in deciding this was a book I’d love - or hate.

For contrast, my review of the novel is here. I even get an IKEA reference in!

Now, I know Amazon will be working to iron out bugs, and I may well eat my words when I look back in a couple of years to re-read this. But, to me, it’s yet more evidence of the tendency to lump ratings and reviews together, to go for the lowest common denominator, to smoothify and blandify everything, to dock the long tail and snip off all that’s individual, quirky, odd-but-fascinating, the bits that don’t fit ...

And this is what’s happening in the area of Search. I listened in to a Gartner seminar yesterday on the Future of Search. After some initial and well-publicised hiccoughs, Google now provide AI overviews, (along with a resource carousel of links) to typical search queries. The feature is available in the US and some other markets. The example shown by Gartner was a simple “electric vs gas dryer”:

   

Helpful enough, I guess - and Gartner gave plenty of marketing tips to make sure your brand ends up in the overview or the carousel. 

The functional advantages of electric and gas dryers are one thing, though. Whether to read Klara and the Sun or Brave New World next is quite another - as is any question or decision that involves human intellect, taste, culture, emotion, past experience, hopes, dreams and anything else full of nuance and impossible to measure. 

I’m all for AI providing information that could be helpful when choosing what to buy.  I look forward to Google (and others) rolling out this kind of overview as an option. But, in the race to be first, I hope they don’t cut down the inspire and discover side of search in favour of definitive answers. 

Cory Doctorow’s vision of the AI Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, and the metaphor of feeding cows a slurry made from the diseased brains of other cows is grim, but not entirely implausible. 

Those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer

A short and sweet post today as the weekend and the high summer outdoors are calling. For those living in Hessen, that will inevitably involve apple-based drinks, with or without that alcohol stuff.

Aren’t the designs for Possmann’s apple juice just perfect? There are so many sludgy, dreary colours around attempting to convey naturalness, making this burst of bright primaries shine even more brightly in comparison. 

Possmann have been making Äpfelwein and juice since 1881, under the slogan “the best thing that can happen to an apple.” The 5th generation of the family is now in charge, and they’re not only the largest apple processing company in Hessen, but the most award-winning cider company in Germany, too. They’re responsible for one of my favourite sights around Frankfurt, too - the colourful tram known as the Ebbelwei-Express.

An apple or five a day (in liquid form) really does keep the summertime blues away. 

RETROWURST: Schreibwaren August 2006

 

Goodness me, how this piece on the mysteries of the German stationery shop and the strange rituals of school start takes me back. Back to another world where children born in the last century were only just starting school. They’re now winning Olympic golds and most likely running multi-billion AI companies, too.

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We are in the middle of the school summer holidays here in Germany. Rather cleverly, to avoid traffic jams, the different German Länder stagger the beginning of the six-week period, with some holidays starting as early as 26^th June and others starting as late as 3^rd August.

 

Despite the fact that we’re in the midst of the school holidays here in Hessen, the retailers are already filling their shop windows and shelves with the Schulanfang (School start) range. I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce you to one particular species of German retailer, the Schreibwarenladen, or stationer, and some of the main brands in the back-to-school market.

 

Before I embark on this, it has to be said as a foreword, that starting school in Germany is a very ernsthaft business. In the UK, introduction to school is gradual, with various pre-school possibilities and then a reception year, while in Germany, children move from the non-compulsory Kindergarten, where no “learning” in the sense of the 3R’s takes place, to the Grundschule, where it’s serious learning and teaching, albeit just for half a day. Children start school in Germany later than in the UK, at six or seven; so, for example, this year’s intake is children born between July 1999 and end of June 2000. In order to get a child accepted for school earlier, the child (and parents) has to go through a series of quite rigorous tests and interviews with teachers, school directors, pediatricians and the like to make sure that the little darling will be able to weather the tough time to come.

 

While getting all the bits and pieces together for starting school may focus more on uniform in the UK, German parents don’t have that to worry about. Enough mistakes have been made with children in uniform in the past here. So, in Germany, the bulk of the getting-ready-for-school purchases are made at the Schreibwarenladen.

 

The first day at school is celebrated traditionally in Germany by the poor child staggering into the playground clutching a thing which, rather unfortunately, resembles an upside-down clown’s or dunce’s hat. This is a Schultute and it is filled with pencils, small toys and a few sweets. In some cases, the Schultute is almost as big as the child itself, especially those children who are little younger, although, having been through the rigourous school acceptance tests, carrying an upside-down dunce’s hat brimming over with goodies while trying to maintain some sense of decorum probably does not present too much of a challenge. Needless to say, the Schultute is one item that is very prominent in the Schreibwarenladen’s window display and choosing the right pattern and size a matter of great concern as the Schultutewill feature with the child in all the inevitable photographs and may even be handed down through the generations.

 

So, onto the Schreibwarenladen. In Germany, there are no jolly own brands like Tesco or W.H.Smiths doing school requisites so it is over to the local independent dealer. In every German village, however small, there will be a shop selling stationery. This shop may also sell newspapers and magazines or toys. It will certainly also sell lottery tickets and perhaps a few sweets. The lady (as usually is) who runs the shop is likely to be a highly respected member of the community who takes a pride in her intimate knowledge of paper clips and staples, ring binders and pencil sharpeners with almost that air of being party to a great learning of mysteries that we observe in the Apothekerin. Her store is likely to have a rather old-fashioned air to UK sensibilities: the kind of place where you actually have to ask for things rather than just grabbing them self-service from the shelf.

 

Before we look at the main brands dominating this emporium, I would like to give a brief introduction to two other branded players in the starting school market. Now, up to two years prior to their children starting school, the Übermuttis (my best go at Yummy Mummy in German - not bad, I think!) will already be discussing whether little Florian or little Björna has got a Ranzen yet and which brand and pattern will it be and are they also getting the complete range of matching accessories? You may wonder what all the fuss is about a satchel, but satchels in Germany have become a science since Scout (https://www.scout-schulranzen.de) created the market for ergonomically designed school rucksacks back in 1975. These health & safety-conscious-inside and kitsch-child-appeal-gone-mad-outside Ränzen replaced the old leather school satchel overnight in Germany and the company has stretched the brand to include the accessories (purses, pencil cases, gym bags) to go with the basic school Ranzen, to bike helmets, to games, to discovery toys, to duvet covers and even to Müsli bars. Have a look at the website: this really is a child brand that manages to combine super design and quality with fun and child-appeal by the bucketful.

 

While talking about Scout, it is only fair to mention their main rival, the number 2 in the market with 25 years’ experience, www.mcneill.de . McNeill have not yet diversified as much as Scout, but they are also a high-quality supplier of Ränzen. In buying your child his or her school backpack, the salesperson will probably start by advising which of the two main brands is ergonomically more suitable for your child and how he or she walks before you get onto the really important stuff of whether it’s pirates or planets on the design. Incidentally, the designs on these bags bear absolutely no relationship to whichever TV programs, films or games are in with primary school children at the moment. You won’t find any Power Rangers, Barbie or Through the Hedge here, or any nasty commercial arrangements with Disney or Dreamworks, just rather Technicolor depictions of universal childhood interests.

 

It is when we consider what has to go into the Ranzen that the Schreibwarenladen and its brands come into their own. Parents of every Schulanfänger are provided with a rather alarmingly long and detailed list of drawing pads, pencils, paintbrushes of particular sizes, exercise books, covers for exercise books in specified colours, folders in specified colours and materials, crayons and modeling clay with a request that “high quality brands” be purchased “for the benefit of your child.” This is, of course, a conspiracy between the teachers and the Schreibwarenladen lady to make sure you don’t go buying that cheapo stuff at Aldi and Lidl. Of course, said brands do sometimes make a celebrity appearance at the discounters but, frankly, by the time you’ve battled your way through the ranks of the Übermuttis-on-a-budget at 8 am just to find that they haven’t got the colour that was specified any more, you might as well have saved the petrol money and got the whole lot at the well-mannered and old-fashioned Schreibwarenladen.

 

There is a plethora of high-quality stationery brands in Germany, some of which are also well-known in the UK. Looking at the brands as a whole, judging from their websites, most of them pride themselves on their long history, their “Made in Germany” quality and the number of quality awards, seals and insignia they have won. In the websites, you enter another world of worthy philosophies, elegant historic engravings and endorsements from the highest authorities. It brings quite a lump to one’s throat to think that this worthy presence is Marketing, too!

 

www.brunnen.de is a good place to start. A family firm for generations and proud of it, the brand Brunnen has been around now for over 100 years and covers all manner of school and office requisites. At just one year younger, but another centenarian, www.herlitz.de is also well-known outside Germany. Herlitz is also in the Ranzen market.

 

Experts in colour, with a core range of paints, felt pens and crayons, www.pelikan.de have 128 years of experience in their field. Another name that is well-known outside Germany for their pencils is www.staedtler.de, the big granddaddy of the pencil world with 170 years in business.

 

If you go by the philosophy that “a bad workman always blames his tools”, German school children really have no excuse to perform so badly in comparison to their peers in other countries. One can only conclude that the system must be at fault, rather than the materials.

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Another world, indeed. The children starting school in the next few weeks were born in 2017/18 - younger than TikTok for goodness’ sake! McNeill has indeed sold out with McNeill x Disney.

But, but, but ... I took at look at Scout. Robots, kittens, dinosaurs and ponies still there. And one tie-in ... for the Bundesliga. 

Reassuring, somehow. And our local Scheibwaren shop still doing a roaring trade.