An era ends. One can truly say that after 62 years of business. What once
happened to Quelle, now hit Neckermann. Neckermann started as a big
department store with mailorder service. You ordered it, they shipped it.
You paid it in rates and you could afford your even-so-expensive goodie.

So if you enter the Neckermann.de homepage now, you’ll only see a small story written in white on black ground:

The page as it is on October 3rd, 2012

Translation:

Business can be cruel if you read words like these. 2000 employees are now without a job because an american investor lately refused to invest as the business was not 100% clear to return profit within a certain timespan. maybe one of those investors or capital businesses who theirselves cry for money when they’re short (and most likely getting it!).

Where financial services are rescued with hundreds of millions of Euros, it seems as that the german government ist not willing to save this many people from unemployment.

Sad but true. Many of the employees are most likely not to find a job (or with extreme difficulty) again as they’re in a progressive age (50 and up).

If a company with such a tradition is going down, many people are probably feeling sad when they think back on how Neckermann made their dreams of different appliances come true.

It’s the same sad story as with Quelle, which went into insolvency in 2009 and made 8000 employees loose their jobs.

But on the other hand it’s hard for such pioneers to survive in times where credit cards and online shops such as Amazon&Co. allow the order of millions of goodies online. The instant delivery service and the fact that lots of small shops are combined among one big portal allow better warehouse usage and planning and reduce the warehouse rent costs.

Small businesses also can act faster on trend changes. That’s prooven fact. And the online business of those big pioneers has been neglected too long. That’s what broke the neck of Quelle and now of Neckermann.

Now the question is: Who’s next in the business to go to heaven… maybe Bader Versandhaus?

Nobody knows for sure!

But you can say one thing for sure: Germany, quo vadis?