Those who were said to be dead literally live longer and yet the “dying of the city centers” and the dwindling attractiveness of many locations is one of the pressing problems of the fashion trade, which will be highlighted on September 28th at the seventh BTE congress “Fashion Emotion 4.0: Future-oriented success concepts for the fashion trade – local and digital ” were on the agenda.
Specters such as the current wave of bankruptcies, price increases or the war in Ukraine were conspicuously little discussed, perhaps because HDE President Alexander von Preen would like to see “more ease again” in the industry. But even without these keywords, there is a great need for action, as the event made clear. However, complaining about problems is not a solution without concrete action – the newly appointed BTE President Mark Rauschen also knows this. “We don’t have a problem with knowledge. We have an implementation problem,” said the managing partner of the Osnabrück fashion house L&T Lengermann & Trieschmann at the beginning of the congress in a conversation with HDE President and Intersport Germany Managing Director Von Preen. A statement that earned him applause and a lot of approval.
How does retail gain a political voice?
It is clear that neither Rauschen and the BTE nor von Preen and HDE can tackle the central problems of the fashion retail sector alone, and so the question was how both associations and the retail sector as a whole can pull together in the future. “How can we pass the ball to each other in political Berlin?” Rauschen asked the HDE President in an introductory conversation in which the political voice of the fashion industry was the focus.
“We as a fashion industry, as a shoe industry, how can we have an impact and contribute to a common strategy, to a message, without being in each other’s dance zone?”
Like so many things in trade, the answer to this is complex, but the main thing is to send consistent signals to politicians in the future, to develop a common position and to “preach it again and again,” explained Von Preen, because it matters The question is becoming more and more common as to how intensively politicians are actually concerned with the fashion industry. “We are now in the process of very intensively transporting these services that trade, especially non-food trade, provides, the supply of people, the social exchange platform, the revitalization of the inner cities.” Support in “preaching” In the future, the HDE will also receive it from the BTE, because it has decided to move to Berlin by 2025, “so that we can go with you, so that we can be reached, so that we can create the network,” says “the new guy at the top of the BTE “, as Rauschen himself introduced himself at the beginning of the congress.
Positive changes – be it in relation to the inner cities, sustainability or digitalization – will take time, but will be worth it, according to the credo of the two association presidents, who look to the future positively and with enthusiasm. At the beginning of the event, Von Preen found optimistic words: “I am passionate about retail and I am sure that retail is on the verge of a renaissance. We have it in our hands now.”
Saving inner cities and the role of people
However, in order to experience a renaissance, retail needs attractive city centers, and these need the fashion retail sector.
“Fashion shopping is still the most important reason for going into the city center for almost two thirds of the participants in our current consumer survey,” said the positive news from Ralf Pangels, Managing Director of the BTE, in the survey results of the latest BTE survey introduced. It is therefore all the more important that inner cities continue to be preserved, but above all further developed. A task that, according to Pangels, lies not only with the cities, but also with the retailers, because there is potential for improvement on both sides.
While it is up to the municipalities and cities to take care of the “eyesores” in the city center, it is the retailers who have to counteract the “monotonous range of products” and the lack of networking of “off-/online offers”. Fulfilling the wishes of those surveyed also lies with the municipality and retailers at the same time, because customers are demanding more events and “nicer shops” – be it the facade or the interior design. The customers don’t care about the implementation, but they demand change, warned Pangels. The high vacancies in the city center were particularly highlighted as a displeasure by 52 percent of the 4,000 respondents.
This is where Ariane Breuer from the organization ‘Stadtretter’ came in. “The municipalities cannot do this alone,” said Breuer about the problem of vacancies and the necessary transformation of inner cities. “Perhaps a little spoiler at this point – retail can’t do it alone either, nobody can do it alone.” And that’s exactly where “the city rescuers” are at work, because they have made it their mission to bring retail and the municipalities together at the same table in order to pursue a common goal – the attractiveness of inner cities. Breuer also brought examples of possible measures to promote attractiveness with him. “We have to take the complexity out of the issues,” said the “city savior”. “Yes, it will take time, but we can do it if we set the right impulses now and really come together and stand behind it, then we can do a lot.”
The Müller-Ditschler fashion house has already done so and, as a prime example, explained at the event “how to position yourself successfully even in difficult locations”. Tanja Kolb, Managing Director of Modehaus Müller-Ditschler, places particular emphasis on employees for this purpose. “No matter where we are and no matter what challenges or opportunities that location has, in the end it is the people who decide, and in today’s world even more so than ever before,” says Kolb. Fashion, she emphasized, is still a “people business” at the end of the day and both a “good location” has its own challenges and a “bad location” has its opportunities – you just have to use them.
The industry is facing a “sustainability burnout”
Saving the inner cities is urgent, but, and this was emphasized again and again at the BTE Congress, “the earth is burning”. According to Von Preen, sustainability is not just the topic of the year, but of the decade. The problem, however, is that the wasteland is facing a “sustainability burnout,” as Maike Rabe, professor of textile finishing and ecology at the Niederrhein University of Applied Sciences, put it in her lecture. Together with the management consultancy Hachmeister+Partner, which introduced the topic of sustainability during the event through Principal Consultant Franziska von Becker, the professor created a sustainability index that is intended to combat “burnout”.
The index is intended to help make the complex topic of sustainability more measurable at the product level, an approach that seems very complicated at first glance, but in the long term could be a welcome alternative to the countless, often inscrutable sustainability seals of individual products. “We have taken the trouble to carefully analyze every label that exists in relation to the respective selected raw materials and in relation to all processes in the supply chain,” explained the professor, emphasizing that both the ecological assessment and social criteria was put to the test.
“The approach of looking at the product is important because customers want to shop without worries,” said André Gizinski, Head of Corporate Development at L&T Lengermann & Trieschmann in his presentation about “the path to becoming a sustainable fashion house”. In doing so, he confirms the future prospects of the sustainability index, but declares labels to be an issue for the coming years, also with a view to changing EU regulations. “I share the materiality and importance of the topic, but for me it is a future issue that we have to take care of now.”