Neu im Kiez. New in the neighbourhood: Je länger je lieber

Our neighbours’ shop opening!

On Saturday we had a packed full day. First two Guerrilla Marketing seminars and then a more funny event: our neighbours to the left (two very nice girls trained as designers as we are) opened their shop called Pomeranza Design Ranch located at the corner Senefelder Straße/Raumer Straße. We went there to have a look, to drink a glass of champagne and to chat a bit with a few people.

See here Katrin with the two girls at their coffee bar (they offer coffee as well. We even benefit from their very delicious coffee sometimes, because we don’t have out own coffee jet:-)

Pomeranza offers awide range of interior design and decoration products from brands like Koziol.

See here their wonderful window decoration.

(pics from Marsupialia)

Scouting for shop locations- act four

Another building site adventure for us two…Yesterday we were better prepared: no Highheels, no skirt, but lipstick ) The trip started with a delicious coffee at the “Kaffeewirtschaft” our to be neighbor in the Senefelderstrasse. Our estate agent that day Miss Wurl was so kind to serve us. Warmed up, we explored the 3 possible accommodations, two of them on the Senefelderstrasse and one on Raumerstrasse. Here the view on the Senefelderstrasse:

Inside the building it was really a mess: Piles of cement bags, sound of proofing, etc. Blessed we, to think about our shoe ware… So it was quite hard to shoot good pics, not mentioning the horrible weather.  Essence of this appointment: we have at least 2 new alternatives for a shop location. One of the sites has two usable rooms (the smaller one for selling; the bigger one for making our stuff, giving classes and storage our goods). The other one has one room for realizing both: Selling and producing. A smaller, non public room for storage, tea kitchen etc. is there too. The last mentioned one is on Raumerstrasse, which has more public traffic. A big Plus in our opinion. But we would need to join presenting the goods with giving classes and our office. The need of cleaning our desks everyday is obvious… Are we tidy enough for that challenge?! Yeah, of course we will be able to clean up once in a while, but everyday? Well, I think we can manage. Finally a shot from outside:

Showing you the images, I´m getting flatteringly again. Oh it´s definitively overwhelming that our idea is having a home soon. Have a nice weekend you all out there!

Scouting for shop locations – act one

Yesterday we started to look for locations for our shop in our preferred Kiez (this is the name for district in Berlin) ‘Prenzlauer Berg‘ near Helmholtzplatz and had a look at our first shop today. Although the shops location isn’t great, we thought to look at it just to get a better feeling for the rents and for our practice in dealing with house-owners and estate agents (which are not always easy to deal with).

And what happened? The shop did even perform worse than we expected. It is located in Prenzlauer Allee that is a really busy street with tramway and a lot of cars. Yes we knew about it before, but there are better places in Prenzlauer Allee as well. First it was the wrong way of the tube station and next is that there are many creepy shops around e.g. very cheap furniture and a mattress outlet and Lidl opposite. That’s not what we are looking for.

And the shop itself? It is still a lamp shop which owners are a 70 years old couple and, believe me, it is furnished like that. Everywhere not the nicest models of lamps you have ever seen. But that won’t be a problem, because everything will be thrown out by end of the year. The room layout is not bad. It has everything what we need: one big room for the shop, a smaller room with daylight for our atelier, a kitchen and a toilet. But the condition of the shop is not the best. Let’s say it’s old and there is a lot of work to do. And the worst is: it’s not even cheap.

Conclusion of the day: No way to take this shop! We can live with everything (except to high rent), but not with a bad location that is really essential for a shop.