When Radermacher opened the shop door of his Carussel for the first time in August 1972, he did so in a different Bonn: it was the federal capital. Embassies, associations and authorities brought people from all corners of Germany and an international audience to Bonn. Bad Godesberg in particular was a patch of this economic and political fluctuation - the perfect place for Radermacher's business idea. Below the Godesburg, in the street Am Michaelshof, he offered children's fashion from France and Italy. The model was a children's fashion shop on Düsseldorf's Königsallee, known as Kö for short. "That was unique at the time, children's fashion from Italy and France was not available anywhere else. And so my shop in Bonn was also unique in its range. Of course, the shop was not as exclusive as today's big luxury brand shops, but it still attracted an upscale and international audience," Radermacher remembers.

As a child, Radermacher played in his mother's textile shop. He doesn't know life any differently than that it takes place between textiles, behind the cash register and with customers coming in and out. His mother and grandfather ran a textile shop in Wasserberg in the Aachen area, where they sold clothes, curtains, fabrics and haberdashery. Herbert Radermacher had been in the thick of it since he was born in 1941. "The shop was a play paradise for me. I was constantly crawling around among the bales of fabric," the retailer recounts.

So the step into professional life was one out of one shop gate into another: he did his apprenticeship as a merchant at Kaufhof in Mönchengladbach, where he made it to department manager. Finally, at the age of 31, he made two big leaps in his life's journey: he became a father, left the Kaufhof gate forever and entered his own shop in Bad Godesberg.

The leap from Bad Godesberg to Bonn city centre

This went so well that in 1986 the Radermacher family opened another branch in Bonn's city centre, in Bonngasse, where there were fewer diplomats, government employees or association members, but more walk-in customers and tourists. In 1999, the branch moved to Friedrichstraße, where it can still be found today. The shop in Bad Godesberg has no longer existed since 2015.

It was no longer worthwhile, says the merchant. Bonn had changed with the Federal Government's move to Berlin in 1999, embassies and associations moved away and so did the public that Radermacher had served in Bad Godesberg.

How the shopping behaviour of Bonn residents has changed

Over the years, the senior citizen has observed a change in people's shopping behaviour: "In the past, families used to dress their children in new clothes from head to toe, from shoes to coats, at the start of the school year and at the change of seasons. Today, people only buy individual items," he explains. He sees that now many young women and mothers work and lack the time to shop. "The majority of my customers are grandparents, aunts or uncles. They either buy gifts for grandchildren, nieces or nephews or come with a shopping list from their mother," Radermacher observes. And he sees that almost 50 percent of his customers come from the area surrounding Bonn - the Rhine-Sieg district, the Ahrweiler district, from the foothills, even from Cologne and Koblenz. Radermacher suspects that it is due to the lack of specialised shops in his own region.

"In the meantime, I can only think of two other specialist children's fashion shops in Bonn city centre. In all the years I have been working here, I have seen at least 30 such shops open and close again," says the 81-year-old. In his opinion, however, Bonn needs unique specialist shops instead of the same chains everywhere in order to distinguish itself from other city centres and to hold its own against the internet. "Friedrichstraße is a fine example of this," says Radermacher happily. He is one of the many retailers who make it so attractive. Even though customer frequency has decreased compared to the past, and people are more cautious about shopping after the Corona pandemic and because of the energy crisis, inflation and the Ukraine war, the 81-year-old merchant wants to continue. Because: selling and the textile business are his purpose and feeling in life.

(Original text: Sofia Grillo; Translation: Mareike Graepel)