Starting Over

Excellent advice, outstanding brands, and an extravagant ambience - the perfect mix of the Sailor & Harbour concept is a hit with the customers.

Starting Over.

Sailor & Harbour/Bremerhaven. After leaving Stiesing, a Bremen-based traditional retailer, Harm Hesterberg thought long and hard about his plans for the future. In the end, he decided to stick to his trade: retailing textiles and other beautiful items. He opened his new store in the Mediterraneo shopping centre next to the Weser estuary. Text: Kay Alexander Plonka. Photos: Sailor & Harbour

Starting over at 51 years of age sounds like risky business. Harm Hesterberg decided to take the plunge. Together with a trainee, he decided to open his own store in a new city. “We want our customers to rediscover what a real shopping experience is. The idea is to create a good atmosphere, trigger emotions, and communicate the enjoyment of an excellent fashion culture.” His inspirational trips often lead him into the Flemish region of Belgium. “There are many good stores in Flanders. In that region, retailers skilfully combine interior and textile design. The portfolio is complemented with food and delicacies”, Hesterberg explains. He chose a similar setup for his Sailor & Harbour store. Even now, shortly after the grand opening, he is already thinking about an extension of the interior concept in adjacent premises.

North Sea Coast with Fair-Weather Guarantee

The so-called “Havenwelten” form a maritime district in the area of the Old Harbour and the New Harbour of Bremerhaven. The seaside town has approximately 120,000 inhabitants. The reason why Hesterberg chose a location in a shopping centre is that the mall is a little different than most of its kind. The Mediterraneo boasts more than 40 specialised retailers and numerous restaurants. The heart of the centre is a central piazza under a large glass dome. Mediterranean terraces with views of the harbour afford visitors the opportunity to sunbathe when the weather is nice. “The ‘Havenwelten’ is a unique project. Bremerhaven has undergone significant structural change and still has a very healthy middle class. Moreover, the wind power industry and the marine research department at the Fraunhofer Institute have made the location more attractive”, Hesterberg explains. Star chef Steffen Heumann runs Pier 6, his restaurant, in the immediate vicinity.

Goods with Value

Alongside a few larger, carefully selected preferred suppliers such as Drykorn, Hackett, Parajumpers, and Stone Island, the product portfolio of Sailor & Harbour mainly focuses on smaller brands in order to act as an ambassador for products with sustainable life cycles. “A brand like Stone Island has convinced with continuity over decades. The family-run business is very healthy and offers top products for medium-sized companies at a high quality level all over the world. There is no goods-related

New start - Harm Hesterberg has decided to operate in the fashion retail trade for a second time.

pressure, no overproduction, and no outlet - it’s a joy to conduct good business with such partners”, Harm Hesterberg says. However, he believes bringing people together is even more important: “While we are compiling outfits for our customers, we offer their entourage coffee specialities at our small bar and offer children an opportunity to browse through a selection of Tintin comics. For one of the next of our regular madeto-measure appointments we are planning an event on an old two-masted sailing ship. We’ll sail out to sea with our customers and spend a nice day. We want to have fun, but - of course - we also hope to make some money.” In this context: Ship ahoy and may there always be enough water under the keel!

Sailor & Harbour

8East GmbH & Co. KG Am Längengrad 12 27568 Bremerhaven/ Germany www.sailorharbour.de Employees: 6 Opening: 26 March 2016 Sales area: 300 sqm Brands for women: 5Units, 7 For all Mankind, 81Hours, Anokhi, Antonym, Au soleil, Alessandro Gherardini, B-Belt, Beck Söndergard, Blonde Nr.8, Brasi & Brasi, Candice Cooper, Debby Debot, Don`t cry Milan, DooWoop, Il Mondo il Mio, Le Crown, Lost in Albion, Lucky 9, Miss Goodlife, Manymal, Parajumper, Rains, Rehard, Rose & Rose, Save the Duck, Superdry, Shirts 4 Life, S.W.O.R.D, Temptation Positano, The Jacksons Brands for men: Bespoke by Sailor, Bleu de Gene, Broska, Deus, Dressler, Fashion Helmet, Filson, Fil Noir, Hackett, Hiltl, Jim & Judi, Kreis, Lovet & Green, Nagano, Nudie, Parajumpers, S4, Save the Duck, Superdry, Superga, Stone Island, Thurston, van Laack

Keep Your Story Straight!

Do you know “Lisa and Lena”? You don’t? In a way, you may actually be missing out on a lesson in attention economics, storytelling, and “Clash of Cultures” (but not in the sense of Huntington).

So here goes: Lisa and Lena are 14-year-old twins from Baden-Württemberg who have turned into what one generally calls an “Internet phenomenon” by posting short clips in which they and dance and move their lips in synchronicity to song lyrics. They have 5 million followers on Instagram and 10 million subscribers on the “musical.ly” app. What might leave many perplexed is easily explained. The two girls are pretty, modern, and stylish. This makes them excellent role models and reflection surfaces - a fact which they take advantage of quite aggressively. They are - in a way - quite old-school. Ultimately, this is the same concept as the Olsen twins. It may be a smaller format, but it follows the laws of the digital revolution. The fact that this alienates many of us and even makes us shake our heads in disbelief doesn’t matter one bit. There have always been youth phenomena that parents have not understood or even rejected. In a way, these phenomena are very important. The blurring boundaries between adolescents and grown-up professional youths are, at the end of the day, very unhealthy. However, 5 million Instagram followers trigger covetousness. This is the moment when a fairly innocent hype suddenly transforms into a hardhitting business model. This process is completely legitimate too, by the way. Lisa and Lena - or their parents and/or management - would be pretty foolish if they failed to monetise the huge popularity. This is where the aforementioned “Clash of Cultures” comes into play. Even though many will disagree, I believe that these 15 second clips, which I find hard to understand, are a kind of subculture. And the core element of every subculture is authenticity. Buzzword alert! The sensorium of this (or almost every) target group whether the supplied content is at eye-level or not is much more pronounced than marketing strategists may expect. In this context, it is irrelevant whether the content is bought or sponsored. The issue is whether the content matches the background story - on a reciprocal level. Should, for example, Hugo Reversed believe that the exorbitant follower count is a sufficient argument to capitalise on the virtual popularity of two cheerful teenagers, then this is nothing more than a misunderstanding. Now we have reached the point when one needs to mention the short, mediahyped liaison between Brioni and Justin O’Shae. In this particular case, the story simply didn’t fit at all, even if convention breaks and contradictions seem so exciting. An old-fashioned, exclusive steak house cannot change its course by appointing the hottest vegan food-blogger as the new chef - at least not if it wants to earn money by selling steaks in the future. The ridicule the smart “It-Bad-Boy” had to endure was both expected and cheap. At the end of the day, Kering, the owner of Brioni, has to take all the blame for this particular misunderstanding. Either Kering didn’t understand the positioning of the Brioni brand, or it didn’t have the courage and patience to see through a completely new positioning. The lesson we should all learn from this: Keep your story straight!

Yours truly, Stephan Huber stephan.huber@ucm-verlag.at

Publisher, editorial office, advertising department and owner UCM-Verlag B2B Media GmbH & Co KG Salzweg 17, 5081 Salzburg-Anif Austria T 0043.6246.89 79 99 F 0043.6246.89 79 89 office@ucm-verlag.at www.ucm-verlag.at

Management Stephan Huber Nicolaus Zott

Editors-in-chief Stephan Huber stephan.huber@ucm-verlag.at Martina Müllner-Seybold martina.muellner@ucm-verlag.at

Art direction/production Elisabeth Prock-Huber elisabeth@ucm-verlag.at

Contributing writers Isabel Faiss Ina Köhler Kay Alexander Plonka Nicoletta Schaper Quynh Tran

Photographers Trent McMinn

Illustrator Claudia Meitert

Image editor Anouk Schönemann anouk.schoenemann@ucm-verlag.at

Advertising director Stephan Huber stephan.huber@ucm-verlag.at

Publisher’s assistant, distribution Sigrid Staber sigrid.staber@ucm-verlag.at Christina Hörbiger christina.hoerbiger@ucm-verlag.at

English translations Manfred Thurner

Printing sandlerprint&packaging 3671 Marbach, Austria

Printing coordinator Manfred Reitenbach

Next issue 12 January 2017

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