Submitted by press news on .
The corona crisis continues to affect press trade. Due to declining passenger numbers, further press sales outlets will be closed for the time being. According to current reports, this affects several locations between Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Bavaria.
No passengers, no sales. As a result, the profitability in various train station kiosks falls, the respective operators only have the option of closing the sales outlets for the time being. Valora is informing about the temporary closure of the branches in Stendal (Saxony-Anhalt, 39,000 inhabitants, category 3), Donauwörth (Bavaria, 20,000 inhabitants, category 4), Jena-West (Thuringia, 8,000 inhabitants, category 3).
Lagardère Travel Retail Deutschland GmbH ends operations in Minden (North Rhine-Westphalia, 82,000 inhabitants, category 3) and Haltern (North Rhine-Westphalia, 38,000 inhabitants, category 4). The train stations in Rostock-Warnemünde (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, 6,000 inhabitants in the district, category 3), Saalfeld (Thuringia, 29,000 inhabitants, category 3), Pirna (Saxony, 38,000 inhabitants, category 4), Greifswald (Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania) are also affected , 59,000 inhabitants, category 4), which is managed by the Dr. Eckert will be looked after.
In addition, in the Upper Palatinate (Bavaria), press handling at the Amberg (Bavaria, 42,000 inhabitants, category 5) and Weiden (Bavaria, 43,000 inhabitants, category 3) locations will be closed until further notice.
The station bookstore
The station bookstore (BB) has a special position in press sales due to special requirements and regulations. The conditions were originally anchored in the Federal Railway Act. The station bookseller was supposed to cover the needs of the travelers. In contrast to other sales outlets, the BB is not supplied via a regional press wholesaler (“wholesaler”), but directly from the publisher.
The conditions laid down in the law included that a train station bookshop must be open all days of the year. Company holidays and closings on public holidays are excluded. The opening times are usually at least 100 hours per week, but not less than 90 hours per week, if this corresponds to the relevant train situation.
There are currently around 350 locations in the station book trade in Germany, and every tenth magazine is sold in the BB. But not every sales point in the train station is automatically a classic “train station bookstore”. Often train station kiosks are supplied by wholesalers if the above criteria cannot be met.
On the other hand, sales points in airports can certainly be given the status of train station bookseller, for example sales points in Frankfurt Rhein / Main, Berlin-Tegel, Berlin-Schönefeld or Munich Erdinger Moos. But even here there is no unified structure for the layperson. While the sales point at Cologne / Bonn Airport (9.9 million passengers in 2010) does not have BB status, the much smaller Dresden Airport (1.9 million passengers in 2010), for example, is part of the station book trade.
As part of the merger of the Deutsche Bundesbahn with the Deutsche Reichsbahn and the simultaneous privatization through the establishment of Deutsche Bahn AG on January 1, 1994, the Federal Railway Act was largely overridden. The “criteria for the station book trade” were therefore agreed in the industry, and the Federal Cartel Office was involved in the drafting. These framework conditions contain the specifications that previously resulted from the Federal Railroad Act for the station book trade.
Station categories
Since 1944, train stations in Germany have been divided into categories. The number of platforms, the length of the platforms, the number of train stops and the number of passengers are taken into account. In the course of time, the rating systems have been modified or renamed again and again. Since 2017, the Deutsche Bahn AG no longer uses the term “station category”, but now the term “price class”. This shows the tariffs that private railway companies have to pay to Deutsche Bahn at a stop.
The most important train stations belong to category 1. In Berlin this includes the stations Hauptbahnhof, Gesundbrunnen, Ostbahnhof and Südkreuz as well as the main train stations in Dortmund, Dresden, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Essen, Frankfurt am Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Karlsruhe, Cologne, Leipzig, Munich , Nuremberg, Stuttgart as well as Hamburg-Altona and the Ostbahnhof in Munich.
Lagardère Travel Retail Germany GmbH
Louis Hachette, who opened his first bookstore in Paris in 1826, laid the foundation stone for today’s Lagardère Travel Retail. In 1852, a train station bookshop opened at the Gare de Lyon train station in Paris. At the beginning of the 20th century, stores were also opened in Spain and Belgium.
Since 1999 the company was also represented in the Czech Republic, Poland and Germany, there under the name HDS Retail Germany. The market entry in the Federal Republic took place through the takeover of the station book trade chain Bauer in Wiesbaden. In 2012 the name was changed to LS travel retail Deutschland GmbH. From October 2015, the company then appeared under the name Lagardère Travel Retail Germany.
Lagardère is represented at the train stations Siegen, Darmstadt, Hanover, Bad Kreuznach, Goslar, Herford, Bünde, Unna, Haltern am See, Wuppertal-Oberbarmen, Hamburg-Bergedorf, Minden, Frankfurt / Südbahnhof, Mülheim an der Ruhr, Wuppertal Hbf., Berlin, Hbf., Osnabrück, Hanau, Wiesbaden, Mainz, Friedberg, Bad Nauheim, Celle, Neuss and at the airports of Hanover, Stuttgart, Dresden, Frankfurt-Hahn, Berlin-Tegel (Terminal C), Bremen, Hamburg, Frankfurt / Main as well as Berlin-Schönefeld. Some sales outlets are operated in the franchise system.
Value
The listed Swiss retail group Valora, founded in 1905, has been represented in the German train station book trade since the takeover of Stilke aktuell GmbH in January 1997. The publisher Georg Stilke, born in Düsseldorf in 1840, opened his first sales outlets in Berlin in 1882 and continuously expanded his company in the years that followed. With branches from Flensburg to Bonn, the company was finally able to achieve around 50 percent of total station book sales in the 1970s.
Finally, Valora took over other train station booksellers with the retail chains BZVG Lux (Berlin), Detlef Horndasch (Gütersloh), Sussmann’s (Munich), Falter (Aachen) and Wittwer (Stuttgart), as well as individual family businesses and is now represented in all federal states. There are also sales outlets outside train stations and airports, primarily in shopping centers. The best-known branch is likely to be the location in the Berlin Europacenter. Valora also acquired companies in other sectors, such as the “Backwerk” and “Ditsch” chains. Many sales outlets are operated by franchise partners. Valora claims that it is the market leader in small-scale retail with over 900 partners.
Valora operates the station bookshops in Aachen, Aalen, Ahlen, Ahrensburg, Aschersleben, Bad Oldesloe, Bensheim, Bielefeld, Bietigheim-Bissingen, Böblingen, Bocholt, Bochum, Bonn, Braunschweig, Bremen, Bremerhaven, Buchloe, Chemnitz, Cuxhaven, Dachau, Delmenhorst, Diepholz, Dinslaken, Donauwörth, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Düren, Düsseldorf, Elmshorn, Emden, Emmerich, Essen, Esslingen / Neckar, Euskirchen, Fulda, Gelsenkirchen, Gütersloh, Haar, Hagen, Hameln, Hamm, Heidenheim, Heilbronn, Herne and Wanne-Eickel, Hildesheim, Itzehoe, Jena, Koblenz, Köthen, Krefeld, Kronach, Landshut, Leer, Lichtenfels, Lübeck, Ludwigsburg, Lüneburg, Magdeburg, Marburg, Mönchengladbach Hbf. And Rheydt, Münster, Neumünster, Neunkirchen, Nienburg / Weser, Nordhausen, Oberhausen, Pinneberg, Potsdam, Ravensburg, Recklinghausen, Remscheid, Rendsburg, Reutlingen, Rheine, Rostock Hbf., Saarlouis, Schorndorf, Schwerin, Schwerte, Siegburg, Solingen, St. Ingbert, St. Wendel, Stade, Starnberg, Stendal, Stralsund, Uelzen, Ulm, Wesel, Witten, Wolfsburg, Zwickau and in Berlin the stations Adenauer Platz, Alexanderplatz (transition from long-distance train to underground), Alt-Mariendorf, Tegel Airport (main hall), Frankfurter Allee, Frohnau, Gesundbrunnen, Greifswalder Straße, Lichtenberg (Subway station area), Neukölln, Osloer Str., Ostbahnhof, Ostkreuz, Rathaus Steglitz, Spandau (long-distance train and at the BVG service point), Tempelhof and Zoo (long-distance train main hall), in Hamburg the train stations Altona, Dammtor, Harburg, , Hauptbahnhof, Blankenese and in the airport, is represented in Munich at the main station, in Pasing and at the Ostbahnhof as well as in Stuttgart at the main station and in Bad Cannstatt.
The Dr. Eckert
With the articles of association dated July 6, 1923, the trading company for travel and transport was founded in Heidelberg. Dr. Adam Eckert and Wilhelm Pappritz. Two years later the company headquarters were relocated to Stuttgart. In 1928 the Frankfurter Tabakhaus’ L. Barbarino was taken over, and the following year the travel supplies specialist Peter Welter was added. In 1988 the bookstores Gerhard Ludwig GmbH in Cologne were acquired.
In the GDR, the GDR’s Deutsche Post was responsible for running the newspaper kiosks. During the fall of the Berlin Wall, this division was outsourced to the then newly founded PSG Postdienst Service Gesellschaft, which was then managed by Dr. Eckert was taken over and later traded as “PSG Prima Service Gesellschaft mbH”. In 2001 the company Handelshaus für Reise und Verkehr was founded. Eckert & Co. and L. Barbarino KG to the trading house Dr. Eckert & Co. KG merged. In 2010 it was decided that all companies in the Dr. Eckert GmbH, although individual brands such as Barbarino will continue to be retained as company logos.
In the station book trade, the company now has branches in Annweiler, Ansbach, Asperg, Aulendorf, Backnang, Bad Mergentheim, Bad Saulgau, Bad Wildbad, Baiersbronn, Bernau, Besigheim, Biberach, Bitterfeld, Bonn-Bad Godesberg, Brandenburg an der Havel, Coburg , Cottbus, Dessau, Ditzingen, Dresden-Neustadt, Ebersbach, Ellwangen, Erkner, Frankenthal, Frankfurt / Oder, Freudenstadt, Göppingen, Görlitz, Greifswald, Grünstadt, Güstrow, Halberstadt, Halle, Hennigsdorf, Herrenberg, Homburg, Kaiserslautern, Köln Hbf. , Cologne-Deutz, Königs-Wusterhausen, Landau / Pfalz, Lauffen, Leipzig main station, Leonberg, Limburgerhof, Lorch, Lörrach, Ludwigshafen, Marbach, Meißen, Merseburg, Mühlacker, Naumburg, Nierstein, Nürtingen, Oberesslingen, Oldenburg, Oranienburg, Binz on Rügen, Pirna, Plochingen, Rostock-Warnemünde, Saalfeld, Saarbrücken, Schwabach, Schwäbisch-Gmünd, Soest, Speyer, Stuttgart (Büchsenstrasse), Stuttgart-Feuerbach, Stuttgart-Zuffenhausen, Trier, Tübingen, Wald shut-Tiengen, Weil der Stadt, Wernigerode / Harz, Wilhelmshaven, Winnenden, at Leipzig Airport and in Berlin at the stations Alexanderplatz (main hall / long-distance train), Baumschulenweg, Friedrichsfelde-Ost, Friedrichstraße, Helene-Weigel-Platz, Lichtenberg (main hall) , Papestrasse, Potsdamer Platz and Südkreuz.
Image by Thomas B. from Pixabay
see also: subject area Corona / COVID-19 pandemic
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