When shoppers in Bremen’s city centre want to buy fair, sustainable, and regional products, they need look no further than ekofair. The concept store contains several shops, three showrooms, a café, and an exhibition area, which all benefit from the store’s central location. To make the shopping experience as smooth as possible, ekofair sought a POS solution that could handle multiple merchants in one simple checkout process.

Giving Sustainability Mainstream Appeal

Located in Bremen’s city centre, the concept store brings the principles of sustainable living to a wider audience. That includes shoppers who previously gave little thought to eco-friendly and regional products. ekofair offers detailed product information to help customers understand how and where their products were made. Shoppers can often even meet the people who produce the products in store. This makes the shopping experience especially memorable and is one of the reasons why ekofair won a competition for funding.

We wanted to make the topic of sustainability accessible to people who normally aren’t so interested in sustainable products. That’s what motivates us and drives us.

Urs Siedentop, co-founder of ekofair

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The main challenge in opening the store was the limited time. There were only a few weeks between the initial idea and the launch of Bremen’s first fair department store. The three founders developed the sustainable shopping concept in October 2020. By November, they had already won a competition organised by Bremen’s economic development agency (Wirtschaftsförderung Bremen). Then it was time to get started. The competition funding started in December 2020 and the store opening was planned for the following January. Due to the pandemic, however, ekofair first opened its doors in March 2021.

In a matter of weeks, the founders needed to find and implement a flexible and centralised POS system. As part of ekofair’s store-in-store concept, the business works with 15 partners to offer a wide range of products from clothing to home decorations and food and drinks. The POS system needed to enable a seamless shopping experience across all these partners. “It was very important for us to have a harmonised POS system,” explains Urs Siedentop, one of the cofounders. “When a customer wants to purchase multiple products from different ekofair partners, they should not have to queue and pay more than once.”

The iPad POS System Maximises Flexibility

To eliminate the need for customers to pay at each ekofair store separately, the founders opted for a centralised solution for all three checkouts. No matter which products they have purchased, customers can pay for everything at any of these checkouts.

A decisive factor in our choice for Tillhub was the personal contact. I had someone on the telephone who gave me good advice and who understood ekofair’s needs. I felt like we were in good hands, and I didn’t need to consider it for long.

Urs Siedentop, co-founder of ekofair

A Quick, Easy, and Customer-Friendly Checkout

Thanks to Tillhub, ekofair was able to implement the POS system quickly and easily. The harmonised POS solution means customers only have to queue once, which makes for a relaxed shopping experience with no interruptions. This meant that the founders had achieved one of their main goals.

It’s all about making the shopping experience as simple as possible for our customers.

Urs Siedentop, co-founder of ekofair

The smooth and centralised checkout is an essential part of the shopping experience at ekofair. It gives customers more time to focus on what really matters to them: sustainable, regional, and ethical products.

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