Part 1 is here.
This is yet another part in my continuing saga of HAVING to live among the Germans. Please forgive me in advance – and try to find humor where there is none. With that in mind, I started Part 1 so many months ago with “I found out what is wrong with Germany…” Of course, I didn’t actually find out anything. But that’s not the point of writing in a blog, now is it?
Anywho…
The Germans have done a few things right since the days of doing all things wrong. For one, they build pretty good cars. No. Wait…
I’m still quite angry that Germans don’t have one – NOT ONE – alternative fueled vehicle in the production pipeline. Also, since I’ve been driving various German cars since the nineties, as far as build quality is concerned, they are doing the same thing Detroit did back in the seventies. Just making ‘em cheaper and cheaper. The difference to American cars, though, is that even the cheaper German cars go like hell. I wonder if the reason Germans don’t have alternative powered cars is because they know something about gas supplies that other countries don’t know? Go figure…
Another thing Germans do right are Autobahns. Even though currently most of their Autobahns serve as government subsidized work placement programs, there are still parts of the A3, the A2 and my particular favorite the A27 (between Bremerhaven and Cuxhaven), where you can drive so fast that the horizon snaps shut before your eyes have time to blink. Seriously. At the risk of bragging and making a fool of myself because of the outrageous carbon footprint that I leave behind – I comfortably admit that, when possible, I drive at speeds of and around 240km/h. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an absolutely crazy thing to do. If I could afford it, I would take the train. But Germany, like so many other western countries, is a slave to invention. The train system here sucks and is in no way competitive with a car. Shame really!!!
Let me put the speed-thing in perspective. For you NASCAR lovin’ mama-boys out there, get this: when I’m in a good mood, when the weather is sparky and I have no family members in the vehicle, when my contact lenses are clear and there’s no stress ringing in my ears, I sometimes drive a well-powered Audi at speeds (on public highways) faster than those who win at Dover International Speedway. Now if that won’t motivate young men (with a driver’s license) to come over here and experience Oktoberfest… I don’t know what else should.
Warning: this is not an advert. Seriously.
The last thing Germans do right that I’ll address here has nothing to do with cars. It has to do with the only other invention that should be recognized as its industry’s VW Bug. I’m talking, of course, about Aldi – the discount supermarket chain where practically every continental German speaking person has at one point or other in their lives bought something. I have a thing for Aldi.
“Aldi” is short for Albrecht Discount. The little stores have also been called “Albrecht’s Fine Foods” or ” Albrecht Delicatessen”.
I’m not kidding. Today every continental German speaking person buys something at Aldi at sometime or other. That’s a business taking in money from well-over a 100million people. Such success has made the founders of Aldi, the Albrecht brothers, the richest men in all of Germany – and they regularly make the Forbes richest schmuck list. Say what you want about rich people, Bill Gates included, but there’s good reason the Albrecht brothers are swimming in cash. It boils down to Aldi just being plain good at what they do. Which is not something you can claim of companies like Wal-Mart. I’m a regular Aldi goer and I don’t think I’ve ever bought anything from that store that was necessary to throw out because it was junk. Do I need to mention Wal-Mart again? Wait a sec…
Oh no, that’s not true. I’m just exaggerating because this is potentially a post that a German might read and then say, “hey, this (American) guy complaining about Germany all the time ain’t all that bad.” So I did buy one of them multi screw-drivers at Aldi once and I had to throw it out after it broke. But hell, it only cost something like five Euros. It worked up until I used it to try and unscrew some heavily rusted bolts while replacing a thoroughly rusted exhaust pipe – where it simply snapped in two pieces. I went through two other tools during that escapade, as well. But I don’t remember where I bought those tools.
Aldi’s secret of success (according to Tommi) is this. Dictate to manufactures a certain quality and then buy & sell volume. Nothing unique there – except maybe the dictate part. The thing that Aldi seems to do different than other discounters is that it retails fairly good quality stuff.
Cheap is one thing, but cheap quality is another.
Aldi was the first discounter of its kind to sell real Champagne – as in Champagne, France – for something like 15,- Euros a bottle. It’s a bit sweet but what the heck – chicks love that shit. So you can accredit Aldi for helping weak-ass German boys getting laid. (German women love the bubbly.) Aldi also gets North East American fisheries to ship over frozen, whole Lobsters, and then sells them for something like 7,- Euros. I’ve had them. They’re great. Needless to say, when the lobsters arrive there’s a run on all the stores. But then there’s the wine. I’ll keep it short and just say, Aldi features some of the best wines from Chile to Italy and they cost half of what they’d cost elsewhere.
There’s lots more on wine here.
When I was still working as an industry analyst one of the companies that I had to research was Aldi. Of course, like many other analysts, I got nowhere. It’s not because I couldn’t find the information – I was a great researcher – but because Aldi is collectively tight lipped. It is a private company and therefore not required to release any information – at least there’s a serious clamp on info regarding how it makes so much damn money. Even the people that work the registers are told that they should never answer any questions asked about the business.
And now on to the ANALOGY that would never be.
Businesses that make the kind of money that Aldi does usually fall to the whims of cycles and downturns or whatever. Or does that only apply to companies that are dependent on the loan-capital derived from being on a stock exchange? Didn’t UPS used to be one of the most successful companies NOT trading a stock? In fact, it wasn’t till 1999 that UPS went public. But I’m not here to bash the current and obvious ill-nature of the stock market. Aldi pushes along and just keeps making more and more money – and is not publicly traded. It is simply a no-frills company – which is reflected in its stores the world over – and seems to focus solely on a level of end consumer quality that is, in my opionion, unmatched – at least in the German market.
So what am I really addressing here?
This may be both a bit pretentious and naive but what the heck. Aldi represents not just an untapped business principle but also a principle that could/should apply to life: balance. It seems that a company like Aldi can balance the madness between supply and demand like no other retail company. In fact, in my whacked-out way of seeing things (aka Tommism), most corporations and their constituencies are only interested in annihilating at least one part of the supply and demand equation that has ruled our lives since Adam Smith first blew his nose. Obviously I’m no economist and I haven’t worked in management consulting for more than eight years – so I might be way off base here. It’s just that when I sit back and look at how things work in our Western Mess… Our corporate consuming situation is unsustainable. So I’ve been looking for examples that potentially are sustainable. I mean, come on, Aldi is rarely in the press for any controversy and more importantly, its employees all seem to be content with their earnings. Wow. Talk about balance. Business Balance?
Have I coined a phrase?
I’ve heard some say that the reason Wal-Mart pulled out of Germany was because of Aldi. The thing about Euro business is that companies have to yield (the word “yield” is not part of the German language which you can also see on the Autobahns) in some way or other to governments. Where American neo-con/Republicans hypocritically claim to be all about reducing government in the “markets”, Euro companies gladly oblige governments – as at times governments seem to fill the employer/employee gap that has so obviously been part of the downfall of corporate Americano. For companies like Wal-Mart “balance” has to be an unfathomable concept.
Rant on. I have to go to Aldi and get some bubbly.
-tgs-
