Consultancy Klaus Braun: advice and statistics for the organic industry

“Our core competence and main activity is consulting, even though people know us better for our business evaluations,” explains Klaus Braun, who has been an adviser to the specialist trade since 1988. “I first had to help wholefood retailers with calculations and to advise them on strategy, because they soon realized that ideals alone aren’t enough to run a successful business,” says Braun. Over 25 years the original one-man firm has developed into a management consultancy with several key areas of activity, but the focus has stayed the same: “My job is to devise individual strategies that point the trade in the right direction.” In so doing, he has the great advantage of both access to many different business concepts and also a far-reaching overview resulting from the accumulated data that he has been collecting for over 20 years. “The combination of practical experience and data analysis is my treasure chest and the basis for the quality of the consulting we provide,” says Braun. (Picture: Klaus Braun is well known in the industry and well connected)
 

The Erfa groups are the second important arm of the business. He set up the first group as long ago as 1993, so the oldest group has now been meeting for 20 years. Three of the existing groups have members across the whole of Germany, and two have more of a regional nature with participants from a radius of 300 km. At BioOst – the trade fair for the specialist organic trade – held in April in Berlin, Erfa Group East was set up. Braun says that as a rule the entrepreneurs, who get together at both two-day meetings each year, are the owners of retail stores or independents with two or three stores. If competitors apply to join a group, there is a discussion, and they look for a suitable way of dealing with the issue. (Picture: Part of the Erfa group meeting is a shop check at one of the participants)

“The tone of these meetings is very personal, because the participants in the groups have in most cases known each other for a long time, and they are fully aware that absolute trust and honesty are imperative,” is how Braun summarizes the rules. He says that the aim of the work of the Erfa groups is to generate “added value from practice for practice”. They usually meet in the shop of one of the participants and carry out a critical shop check, that is also documented by taking photographs. The themes of the meetings in the spring always include the presentation and discussion of business comparisons and the annual evaluations of individual stores. Examples of other themes are personnel management and organization, but there is also the so-called “weather report”, in which all participants describe their current situation or their observations of market development. (Picture: Chart from the turnover barometer Development of sales in the health food trade Jan – March 2013 on 2012)

Karin Lösch joined the firm in 2007. The graduate information specialist gained professional experience at, for example, Nielsen in market research and database management before moving to Klaus Braun. For the turnover barometer, she compiles data from around 300 businesses, and in the business comparison about 100 companies are involved, and this comprehensive information is then evaluated. The key figures provide the basis for a whole variety of detailed analyses that are made available to the participants: in the case of the turnover barometer at no charge; in the case of the business comparison for a fee of 200 €. Anonymous data flows into overarching evaluations like the annual Compendium, that appears in June and, with the help of tables, graphics and text, provides a business economics overview of the previous year (order here). Karin Lösch and Klaus Braun are especially proud of the fact that every year they have the figures for the previous year ready to present at BioFach. Usually evaluations of the previous year are not available until half way through the next year. (Picture: Karin Lösch compiles the data from retailers and evaluates them)
 

“The key data that we collect can be evaluated specifically to provide answers to questions raised by  individual clients,” Karin Lösch explains. The spectrum of possibilities covers the analysis of a campaign for a manufacturer to evaluating the energy costs of  shelves for dairy products. Operating with the motto “As many people as possible should have the greatest possible benefit”, the consultancy collaborates with various other data processing companies like bioVista, Christoph Spahn, Bio-Verlag, the EU project on structural data in the wholefood trade - Strukturdaten des Naturkostfachhandels - A'verdis (BioBistro) and Elfriede Dambacher (Naturkosmetik Verlag). “I care a great deal about transparency in the economics of the market and the resulting advantages for the development of the industry,” says Klaus Braun. (Picture: The Compendium 2013 contains detailed data, graphics and analyses of the year 2012)
 

“The various services we provide have often been developed in response to the requests and questions we have received,” says Braun. For example, this was the case about two years ago with the theme generation change. In collaboration with his consulting colleague Ernst Härter in Bavaria, Braun devised a special seminar with workshop character that is now offered once a year. Simon Döring, who joined Klaus Braun in November 2011 via the SÖL (Foundation Ecology and Agriculture) trainee programme, has been a permanent member of the team since the end of 2012, and his remit is another current theme, namely online marketing for the specialist trade. The economist worked after graduation as a district manager for Lidl, which was, however, not to the liking of this socially committed young man. Now he has found his destiny with the communication consultancy. “I can use my skills and qualifications here in a meaningful way, and I’m dealing with people all the time – that’s what I like,” says Döring. (Picture: The next generation: one of  Simon Döring’s responsibilities is internet marketing for the specialist trade)
 

“We find that many owners are in desperate need of advice concerning online marketing, so it was a logical step or us to extend our service to cover this area,” Döring explains. He is convinced that the internet medium is ideally suited precisely for the specialist trade to communicate its strengths. But, as he points out, if retailers are not familiar with the tools of online marketing and how it works  - and there are many who are not – they can help by coming together to start thinking about aims and possibilities and to give advice on developing the concept. “Who is looking at a website makes a big difference: the programmer, the operator, the target group or a comparatively objective and "neutral person with a trained eye for websites". Ultimately, presence on the web should be more than a modern visiting card,” says Döring. He finds it exciting when he sees how companies in the specialist trade are increasingly entering the digital age. (Picture: Screenshot internet site)
 

25 years of experience and data collected for over 20 years enable the team at Kommunikationsberatung Klaus Braun to detect medium and long-term developments and tendencies. The figures, that are compiled in Speyer, find their way into, among other things, the situation reports on the wholefood trade and the health food trade that are produced by the economic research institute Wirtschaftsforschungsinstitut Ifo in Munich for the cooperative banks Volksbank and Raiffeisenbank. “Our grounded evaluations could well have helped on numerous occasions to persuade banks’ advisers to overcome their prejudice and give loans to shop owners,” states Braun, who also advises retailers setting up in business for the first time. His business consultancy, that is listed by the KfW-Bank as a start-up coach and by BAFA and many institutes in respect of regional programmes, uses all options to generate funds to support companies.  Kommunikationsberatung Klaus Braun operates not only in Germany but also in Austria, Italy, Switzerland and Poland (Organic Marketing Forum).