Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weinzierl | Hacker News Reader

Several hyper-specialist shops I know in Munich:

- balloon shops seem to do really well because we have several here and every major city seems to have one

- foam shop for when you need to fix your upholstery

- venetian blind store which only sells the vertical kind

- Ketten Wild was a chain shop that only sold chains but chains in all forms and sizes

- la porcelaine blanche's slogan is "only china, only white" and that is what they do

- elk shop for everything elk related - not that we have any elks in Germany but elks are cute

- Schrauben Preisinger sells only screws. They claim they have 30000 different types in their store and this is absolutely credible. A few years ago I was there to get some M1 screws for a project when I witnessed an interesting exchange between another customer and a salesman. The customer had brought a screw with a quite wide thread. It was a straight screw, not tapered and not a wood screw, just with an obviously non-metric thread. He inquired if they had this type of screw in stock. The salesman answered slightly offended that this was a shop for machine screws and they would not sell furniture screws.

Also button shops are super useful. If you lose a button you go there with your piece of clothing and they will find a suitable replacement in no time. I never visited the one in Berlin but the one in Munich saved me good money.

EDIT: I just remembered two more:

- Gummi bear shops are a bit like balloon shops. I don't understand it but there seems to be enough demand to support several of them in a single city.

- Berlin's Ampelmann. Maybe doesn't quite fit into the category because it's more of a tourist curiosity. On the other hand: A shop that only sells stuff related to the graphic design of a symbol on the traffic lights of a defunct state is quite hyper-specialized I guess.

Where do you go when you want to buy name brand spatulas at a fraction of retail cost? Spatula City!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XbCWmY0eqY

I was wondering when Gandhi II would show up there...

Just thought of two more in Munich:

- Der Lautenladen sells only lutes, Anatolian lutes to be precise.

- Almost next to it is the "Spy Shop". I don't know if real spooks buy there but you can take the name quite literally.

New York used to have a Spy Shop in the 80's. It sold all kinds of tiny cameras and listening devices and things. I never went, but the ads made it seem interesting.

There's still one there. I see them often in tourist/beach cities, presumably because kids are enticed by things like invisible ink (judging from their billboards).

I remember my first visit to Berlin AFTER 1989 (my first time was in the summer of 1989 and one of the things my dad wanted to do was go through checkpoint charlie and spend some time putzing about in East Berlin/Germany and I vaugeley remember noticing the difference in the crossing lights as a difference but that was probably about it...) and in sometime around '92 the little guy was EVERYWHERE. (for context to non-Germans or people who've never spent any time in Berlin/former east German cities the Ampelmann that the parent poster is referring to is the character of the crosswalk "green man walking/Red man stop" lights that was in use in the former East Germany before reunification. it was much more of a personable silhouette than the more diagramatic stick men of the west. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ampelm%C3%A4nnchen

Schrauben Preisinger is an amazing store.

It's properly old-fashioned in appearance. A small, dark customer area, bounded by a counter staffed by grumpy men of oddly indeterminate age. Backed by rows and rows of ancient-looking wooden shelving, containing literal tons of different bolts (or any kind of threaded fastener).

I once went there because I needed a particular bolt for a 1972 Land Rover engine. Certainly not metric, but I had no idea what kind of thread and precise size it was. The clerk glanced at it, turned briskly, walked to a particular shelf, and picked up the bolt I would need. No looking, no measuring, no scratching of heads, no hesitation. He just eyeballed the bolt size and thread right there. He was correct, too.

I'd love an excuse to go there again, but I sold the Land Rover :-D

Edit: just remembered:

- a shop that sells combs. Yes. Combs.

- a shop that makes bespoke suspenders

- a shop that specialises in sausages from a particular region in Germany (which is far enough from Munich to feel entirely random)

Your description of the store is very accurate. One thing I'd like to add that always fascinated me was their stock ledger. Long after everything was computerized here, they still had this enormous ledger resting on a kind of lectern behind the counter. Every sale was carefully entered in this book. It's a few years since I have been there for the last time so I don't know if it still exits or if they have got a computer eventually.

Even the 75000 inhabitant city I live in has a balloon shop, but also one for brushes. Also in the neighboring city there used to be a shop just for rubber.

I imagine the margins for balloon shops incredibly good.

They keep most of their inventory uninflated so storage requirements are not that big and the designs keep a long time, and for non-specialists, it's generally not worth keeping bottled Helium around, so it's a pretty decent business I suppose.

I buy my inflated balloons at the "dollar store", which is a good deal since they are 3.99 or more at the grocery store.

Are you suggesting the prices are inflated?

I wonder how many of the specialist shops are just a byproduct of a population of highly ambitious fetishists...

My old small town has one...it is still there after years... This city / village has 14.000 people there. No idea how this shop survives. But it seems to work. Or they are tax evasion scams. Who knows.

My ignorant understanding from consuming American pop culture is that Germans have a particular affinity for art in the medium of gummy :) https://youtu.be/T-2VGJPOJVA

Please give more information on the elk shop. I need it... for research (and cant find it on google)

It was located in Frauenstraße near Isartor [1]. If I remember correctly its name was just "Elchladen". Unfortunately I can't find it either, so it probably closed.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@48.1343175,11.5814045,19.15z

Thats a shame.

And btw, did you know moose/elk were first described on paper by Julius Ceasar during his "trip" to Germania? He thought they have no joints in their legs and sleep propped up against trees.

Just a little moose fact for you. I wish this store was still open.

Edit since I want to share this; other moose-related businesses I've been to in Europe:

- Moose Coffee chain in north England (excellent)

- Moose Garden in Sweden where you can live with the moose.

My wife saw this one on the internet and really wanted to visit - unfortunately we are in Australia.

Bones for Dogs, a butcher just for raw meat to feed your dog.

http://www.bonesfordogs.de/

>elk shop for everything elk related - not that we have any elks in Germany but elks are cute

This sentiment right here is why more people are killed by Elk every year in Canada than bears.

This statement is actually wrong since Germany has a population of about 10-20 elk (and more are migrating from Poland). But yes, last year we also had a car crash with an elk in Brandenburg but only the animal and its unborn died.

That wouldn't have occurred to to me, but you are right. I've heard about bears and wolves, but now we have elk too.

> la porcelaine blanche

Not only is their slogan descriptive, the name alone suggests as much as well.

I’ve been to the Ampelmann shop and have a shirt! Yay me

there is a few more: Glass Shop: only sells things made out of glass. I love it. https://www.bottles.de/index.html There are a few shops that sells only keys and safes. There are 2 stores that sells only clothes to ballet

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