In 1999 in Cologne/Germany Butlers (a specialist for living accessoires) opened his first stores : in 2021 the company had over 100 own outlets and 30 franchise shops; its turnover is roughly 95 million Euro. - In the online-sector ten years later Home24 entered the furniture sector ; by the take-over of its competition Fashion For Home in 2015 it also became partly a brick-and-stone retailer : since 2019 even with a format of 8.000 square-meters sales area. Home24 has in the end of 2021 a total turnover of about 600 million Euro.

Now the owners of the two companies exchanged shares in a company-merge. For Prof.Dr.B.Hallier of the European Retail Academy this is a good case-study for a cluster of competences : traditional brick-and-stone shops in basically two formats , being able to serve down-town customers as well as industrial areas ; being online visible even beyond the national borders ; being accessable for customers by clicks as well as by physical store-contacts ; upscaling the buying volume in the industry/ wholesale-retail relation ; upgrading the visibility

Taken the development of retail/wholesale in perspectives of 50 years Prof.Dr.Hallier stated at the opening of the EuroCIS exhibition in Düsseldorf/Germany : " Comparing the period of 1950 till the end of the century we could watch the development of brick-and-stone outlets as drivers : starting with small self-service stores, supermarkets , hypermarkets, big boxes like IKEA and ToysR US and finally shopping centers. From 2000 onwards we have the development of the Internet, B2B, B2C . ALIBABA and AMAZON but also Data Collectors like GOOGLE or Delivery Experts like DHL are becoming retailers or partners of Retail Knowlege Consortia (RKC)."

"We are now in a period of increased digitalization as well in omni-channel as well as also as alternative new distribution channel developed by newcomers in retail and associated sectors. CORONA had been one of the additional factors speeding up the processes beside the big opportunities of the Internet of Things which enable explanations and advertising activities in a scale never thought of 50 years ago. Today former Sciencefiction becomes REALITY" Hallier added.

In the year 2000 EHI Retail Institute and Messe Düsseldorf started a special Retail Technology exhibition between the tri-annual EuroShop which is the world leader for shopfitting. "We saw in the beginning of this century that technology has a higher speed than the rest of the exhibition : therefore we created this new platform as an in-between of the EuroShop-dates" Prof.Dr.Hallier remembers being President of EuroShop at that time. "In 2002 we already experienced such a high frequency for this market-segment that we decided to run this exhibition in the two years between the EuroShop as a stand-alone fair with a name near to EuroShop : EuroCIS(CommunicationInformationSecurity) : and to use that signage also as an internal area during EuroShop, which became the Umbrella-Brand for a whole family like EuroConcept, EuroSales, EuroExpo. Meanwhile EuroCIS is European-Leader in its segment." he added.

After founding the European Retail Academy in 2005 then in 2007 EHI together with GS 1 enriched EuroShop/EuroCIS with a benchmark-show for the German speaking academic community : Awards for Scientific Research in retail : BA , MA, PhD - shifting then also for Awards for Science Cooperations between Universities and Business, and lately also for successful Start-ups.
 

Discussing at the hybrid Nobel Fest in April 2022 in a session moderated by Prof.Dr.B.Hallier with the topic of how an agricultural revolution could feed the world two strategies contrasting each other in their philosophy and technology were developed : on the one hand the traditional small farmers with mixed /diversified crops and on the other hand technology-driven solutions for (partly) newcomers in the Agri-/AquaFarmBusiness.

While Helena Norberg-Hodge from Local Futures in Australia and Rajendra Uprety from Nepal presented development options based on local knowledge - Stuart Oda/China and Chee Wee Lee /Singapore explained success stories of technology driven solutions growing food at the point of sales like supermarkets or restaurants or using empty space of parking-garages or even skyscrapers. The Round Table agreed that a lot of the choice of preference will have to be fitted to the national situation of each country based on culture, development status and education. But for all countries there is a great demand for further knowledge exchange and benchmarks.
 

Parallel to Prof.Dr.B.Hallier who had been appointed Head of the Institute for Self-Service (ISB) in 1984 Winfried Lambertz, Master of Business Administration from the University of Cologne, started as an assortment analyst at the institute. In 1989 he changed to the media-department to become responsible for the operative business of the print editions like the monthly magazin Dynamik im Handel, Stores & Shops, DHI/EHI Encyclopedia of Trade and others. In the end of 2021 he retired as an editor after nearly 40 years watching and promoting innovations in the retail/wholesale-sector.

"In Applied Sciences the accumulation of facts is of utmost importance for the creditability of communication" Hallier said at a meeting with W.Lambertz reviewing the developments between 1984 and 2022. "The players in the market, the structure of the total market and the importance of the different market-segments have changed dramatically over that period - but the need for a scout to balance the info for market-reports between main-stream versus real innovation versus fake , to be trusted/respected by those who defend their traditional markets and those who attack by new tools or methods remained : the duration of being successfully in such a job is already an indicator for sustainable journalism and generally for HR" Hallier concluded.