Erdkorn opens new store

Shortly after the start of the new year, Samir Besic, the sole owner and managing director of the organic supermarket chain Erdkorn, didn’t know whether to laugh or cry: he took over a store in Nortorf and renovated it ready for opening; in the centre of Hamburg he lost his first Erdkorn store to Denn’s when, after ten years, his lease ran out at the end of 2011. So the number of his stores stays the same at eight, and after three years his restructuring of the company is largely at an end. The new Erdkorn store in Nortorf/Schleswig-Holstein opened on 16.1.2012. (Picture: Samir Besic)
“We are doing very well and our stores are all self-sustaining now,“ Besic is pleased to report. In the middle of December 2008, he took over the reins from the former managing director and founder of Erdkorn, Thomas Hinz. Besic, a former Grell employee, beat several competitors who wanted to acquire the business and with a six-digit sum he became the owner of the organic supermarket chain consisting at the time of a dozen stores. The main shareholder was the Haspa holding company BGM, a subsidiary of the Hamburger Sparkasse. As he expanded the business across the whole of Germany, this bank acquired more and more of Hinz’s shares. At the end of 2008, it was clear that the discount concept of the former Aldi employee had failed. To avoid insolvency, the banks, suppliers and landlords granted partial cancellation of debts and the company became largely debt-free. After two weeks of familiarizing himself with the company, Besic took over the organic chain. 19 years ago, the 44-year-old-Besic came as a refugee from Bosnia to Germany 19 years ago, where he graduated in economics in Kiel. To finance his studies, from 1996 he worked unpacking deliveries at the store 1000 Körner-Markt in Kiel. He later worked there in sales.

After the takeover of Erdkorn on 1.1.2009, Besic continued to restructure, with the closure of some stores and transfer of others to local operators. The store in Hamburg-Kieler Straße was closed after the lease expired, and the loss-making store in Köln-Bayental was relinquished at the end of November 2011 when the premises were sublet because of the 15-year lease. The store in Lübeck was sold to Jörg Rühr (Der Naturkostmarkt), and the shop in Mühlheim (Ruhr) went to Biohaus.

“The most important thing for me was to restore the reputation of Erdkorn,” the calm and thoughtful Besic explains. Instead of extending the Erdkorn own brand (about 300 articles), he opted for known brands like Rapunzel and Dr. Hauschka and abandoned the discounter concept. Since the end of 2009, Erdkorn has been one of the Rapunzel partner-shops. This is reflected not only in the goods on sale and Rapunzel displays but also in the light green T- shirts worn by the employees (picture) that carry the names of both Rapunzel and Erdkorn. Whilst Naturkost Grell is the main wholesale supplier, Biogarten also plays a part.

The stores are being redesigned in stages. Of the eight stores, three have had their walls painted in bold colours (green and red), and another store is half-finished (picture); the shelving has been replaced and new product signs have been used. The other stores still have their cheap discounter look, with white walls and yellow signs and labelling.

Special design features that catch the eye are the wide format photos that you can see, for example, in the 270 m² shop in Halstenbek that opened on 20 October 2011. Halstenbek has 16,000 inhabitants and lies 15 km north-west of Hamburg’s city centre. Bright ideas that create a good mood throughout the store. “We’ve devised around ten motifs with a photographer friend, our employees and other friends,” Besic explains. In one of the photos a cheeky granddaughter is smearing quark on her grandpa’s nose (picture), another shows a cucumber face mask, and a third is a picture of people toasting each other with a glass of wine. In each case, the attractive images of people, some of which are photo montages, stand for a product category. In all Erdkorn stores, you find around 5,000 articles, and a total of 7,500 are listed by Erdkorn.

The new opening in Nortorf, about 70 km to the north of Hamburg, is the original headquarters of the wholefood wholesaler Grell, that operates today from Kaltenkirchen. The cereals wholesaler, founded in 1818, began to include the first organics in its product range in the 1970s (see the firm’s history). When in the 1980s it converted to a wholefood wholesaler and eventually moved to Kaltenkirchen in 1997, the retail store stayed behind. Although the town only has just over 6,000 inhabitants, the Grodt family that owns Grell decided the shop should remain to serve the needs of consumers in Nortorf. It was leased to Mr and Mrs Mumm, who were not able to make a success of the business. Then Erdkorn took over the 210 m² shop, redesigned it and relaunched it in the middle of January 2012 (picture).

Erdkorn puts great emphasis on “regional organics”, and the labelling of regional products is being improved. You already see a small black stamp on many products on the cheese counter. In the next few months it will be found on the dry goods range and on fruit and vegetables. Erdkorn wants to underline its difference from Denn’s Biomarkt – its main competitor – with service counters, service in general and regionality. What has created anxiety among the other wholefood retailers is the speed of Erdkorn’s expansion. This is why in several rival stores self-service counters have been replaced or supplemented with service counters. “Berlin is the only place where we still don’t have any service counters,” says Besic. In the meantime, around 100 employees earn their living at his company.

Samir Besic has mixed feelings about his future prospects. On the one hand, he would like to continue the current growth rate of about 5 % on the same retail area; on the other, he is concerned that the number of affordable and available premises is extremely limited.


Tip: www.erdkorn.de



Erdkorn outlets:

Opening	City	Address	retail space
2002	Kiel	Hopfenstraße 63	1000 m²
2003	Hamburg-Iserbrook	Sülldorfer Landstraße 11-15	800 m²
2005	Berlin-Wilmersdorf	Bundesallee 201-203	650 m²
2005	Hannover-Bothfeld	Sutelstraße 75	800 m²
2006	Hamburg-Winterhude	Moorfuhrtweg 15	600 m²
2008	Hamburg-Volksdorf	Groten Hoff 6	450 m²
2011	Halstenbek	Hauptstraße 32	270 m²
2012	Nortorf	Johannisstraße 7	210 m²