The Curious World of Tchibo
If you’ve spent any time in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovakia, the Czech Republic or Türkiye, you will have likely come across a Tchibo store. The popular chain is one of Germany’s most successful exports, although it’s not immediately clear why, since it’s ostensibly a high end coffee chain. In an already saturated market, it takes a lot to stand out from the crowd, but Tchibo’s unique selling point seems to be its rotating selection of seasonal and often random products. In practice, the shop changes out its stock of fitness clothing, garden furniture, kitchen aids or consumer electronics on a weekly basis. Aside from coffee, customers can never guarantee what they might get, it’s a lucky dip as a business model. Customers may enter looking for one thing, but could easily leave with a full lycra bodysuit, a garden trowel, a last-minute holiday and some extra sturdy window locks.
Based in Hamburg, Tchibo’s distinctive name comes from combining the German word for coffee bean (Bohnen) with the name of the company’s founder, Carl Tchilinghiryan. From humble beginnings way back in 1949, the nationwide chain has grown to be a stalwart of the German high street, where throngs of confused consumers can be seen leaving stores with a phone contract in hand and an ironing board under their arm. In its initial iteration, Tchibo wasn’t a physical store but a mail order company, which may go some way to explaining the randomness of the products that fill the shelves 74 years later. Walking into a store in 2023, it certainly feels like the physical manifestation of a mail order catalogue. In many ways, Tchibo has a lot in common with British high street curiosity Argos, where customers can browse a full catalogue of items before choosing what they want. Instead, Tchibo offers one page or perhaps a section of a catalogue per week. This approach may well be the secret to success, since rotating the stock on a weekly basis goads consumers into making rash purchases from a fear of missing out on a bargain.
Opinions on Tchibo tend to vary. There are some who staunchly defend the myriad of bizarre offerings, swearing blind that they fully intended on buying those LED candles, or the bottle opener that plays the opening bars of the Weiß-Blau Marsch. Even more will defend the quality of the products, which in my own experience can range from excellent to unusable. Generally, the smaller items work well, but expect complications with the larger, more expensive items. A few years back my wife bought an exercise bike, ignoring my vocal protests that the quality was bound to be questionable. After building it, I found that several vital parts were missing, and despite being sent two more replacement bikes, none seemed to feature the full complement of components. After the third attempt, I quietly boxed it up and requested a refund. My wife and I haven’t spoken of it since.
When I ask people if they like Tchibo, they stare into the middle distance with a look that says “I do like Tchibo, but I don't know why”. In reality, most of that staring seems to be people desperately trying to remember something useful they bought within the walls of a Tchibo store. I’ve heard many justifications for why Tchibo products are good, but few seem to include any item bought there or if it's still regularly used. People may well have picked up a banana shaped box in which to carry a single banana to work, or a device for exact measurements of butter, but all are easily forgotten once the novelty has worn off.
Tchibo’s success seems to come from these easily forgotten products. The majority find a home in a kitchen cupboard somewhere, gathering dust next to an equally neglected sandwich maker. This mixture of quickly forgotten novelty makes Tchibo incredibly useful for one specific purpose: it’s the go-to store for gifts for people you don’t know very well. Want to buy the boss, the neighbour, or the dentist a gift, but have no idea what they may want? No problem, Tchibo has you covered. No one is ever disappointed with a Tchibo product, but don’t be surprised, months later, to discover your gift sitting in a garage or cupboard, still in its unopened box. Various housewarmings and birthdays have stocked our cupboards with a fine selection of Tchibo branded items. My wife and I don’t bake muffins, yet we’ve been gifted enough reusable cake moulds to begin a small-scale bakery operation. I’ve never had a problem cutting apples either, but at some point we gained an apple-shaped apple cutter, which looks fun, but which is neither big enough to adequately accommodate the average sized apple, nor sharp enough to cut it should you manage to find one that fits. I can’t actually remember anyone using it, since soon after getting it we remembered knives existed. Another stellar purchase was a pedometer which was bought on a whim one January when my wife and I realised we had overdone the festive period. Then there’s the juicer, something I would have assumed would be difficult to get wrong, but in true Tchibo fashion, some genius decided to eschew the traditional design and instead make it look like a leaf. Unsurprisingly, it manages to squirt more juice onto the floor than it will ever catch in its incredibly narrow leaf shaped reservoir.
The best advice I can give a potential customer of Tchibo is to try and buy something that you might actually use. Don't be tricked into buying that oversized gold meditating frog or an electronic dog barking device to scare off burglars. My wife, a defender of Tchibo, is adamant that useful bargains can be found, pointing out I had at least one pair of Tchibo socks in my wardrobe. So, if I can say anything about shopping there I would say; get the coffee, buy the socks, leave behind any plans to purchase the jogging parachute. Yes, I said Jogging parachute.
Proofreader: @ScandiTina
Image Credit
Bild von Anna Sulencka auf Pixabay
