Mark Rauschen
What on earth do you wear to meet someone who must be the most important fashion expert in Osnabrück? Well, actually, the most important fashion expert in the city and whole rural district of Osnabrück, in Cloppenburg, Vechta, the Emsland and the Münsterland, to say the least?
We’re meeting Mark Rauschen, the boss and proprietor of the L&T fashion store, also known as Lengermann und Trieschmann in Osnabrück. L&T is far more than just a fashion store: it is somewhere where customers can actually come and spend the whole day. It has its own food hall that caters to every taste, as well as various counters and quiet zones spread out on the various floors. L&T offers everyone the ideal garment for every occasion. Needless to say that real Osnabrückers have a customer account. And L&T accompanies them throughout their entire life, with Babygros and children’s clothes, special dresses and smart suits for the graduation ball, an impeccable outfit for the first job interview, as well as a wedding dress for the bride and an elegant suit for the groom. And yes, people will even find the right thing to wear for a funeral. If it doesn’t fit perfectly, it can be adjusted here on the spot: it will take the store’s own dressmaking department no more than an hour to shorten a pair of trousers.
So what is the best thing to wear for our meeting? Dressed in L&T from head to toe with anticipatory reference to the custo-mer account that can be taken for granted? That might seem too much like grovelling. Casual chic or casual-smart for busi-ness, or would a suit and tie be better? No, not really, this is not a job interview. And perhaps Mark Rauschen doesn’t really notice what the other person happens to be wearing? What-ever the case, that would be a good question to start our meeting. And what an answer! “But of course I notice what other people are wearing, I grew up with fashion, after all.”
Rauschen took over the company from his father and mana-ges it in a team with two other colleagues. There are also four other partners. He has used his role to constantly expand his own retailing concept: “We offer our customers quality time. After all, just buying something is totally different to going shopping. Buying something is what you do when you need a pint of milk because the fridge is empty. But going shopping is about treating yourself and having a good time.” That’s why the internet doesn’t pose a real threat to his sector, at least for as long as retailers do their homework. “The things we sell need to fit properly, so we offer professional personal advice that you can’t get on the internet.” Which also proves the point that no-one observes and knows their customers quite as well as the retail sector, where a good fit depends on being able to try something on. And that is probably exactly one of the secrets behind L&T’s successful shopping concept. Walking through the store has something organic about it for the customers, strolling through the pleasant surroundings, with one nice sur-prise soon followed by the next amazing offer. As with excel-lent football players or actors, the complex decisions and vir-tually scientific insights and processes going on behind the scenes remain practically invisible: what looks so easy is in fact really difficult and great art.
It’s not just football but all other kinds of sport as well that are now featured in the latest addition to Osnabrück’s major attraction, which is said to influ-ence letting and leasing rates in the central pedestrian zone: the closer to L&T, the more expensive it gets. This is because Mark Rauschen’s sports outlet embodies a world all of its own, particularly the spectacular ‘Hasewelle’ indoor surfing facility in the basement. Customers can watch what’s going on either directly from a kind of amphitheatre, or from all the other floors at any time, looking down through the totally open interior. This activatable per-manent wave for surfers in a kind of indoor pool works in exactly the same way as the legendary Eisbach wave on the edge of the ‘Englischer Garten’ park in Munich, or the Leine wave in Hanover’s old town near the Lower Saxony State Parliament, which is the latest open-air variation on this theme. In contrast to Munich and Hanover, in Osnabrück surfers can ride the wave all year long regardless of the weather, thanks to L&T. Not only professional surfers use the facility for their competitions. It is also popular with companies for team-building activities, or with groups of friends and whole families. Mark Rauschen has noticed something else as well: “We keep seeing small groups of people coming in when those who live in Osnabrück want to show their visitors the town. Private tour guides stand here at the ‘Hasewelle’ in the sports outlet, hold their arms out wide and declare with utter conviction that this is our Osnabrück surfing wave and the town’s latest attraction.” Once again, this goes to show that L&T is so much more for Osnabrück than just a fashion store.
It is this modern retailing concept with all its love of detail that makes Mark Rauschen a popular person to consult about the future of Germany’s town centres. After all, L&T is one of Germany’s five best upmarket fashion stores, coming after the legendary “KaDeWe“ department store in Berlin and the Breuninger stores with their flagship store in Stuttgart. The stock here is always worth more than 2 million Euro. With a catchment area of 80 to 100 kilometres, the L&T boss is familiar above all with the requests of customers coming in to shop from further afield: “Up to now, our multi-storey car park has been like a kind of life insurance: after all, people coming in from the country want to use their car to get into town”. On the other hand, he himself isn’t necessarily fixated on cars, says Rauschen: “Public transport is also fine when it works properly, but as I say, it has to work properly.” He also thinks it’s a good idea for city dwellers to travel by public transport or to use their bikes to leave more space on the roads for visitors coming from further away. “It all depends on where these people are coming from: out in the country, buses tend to run less frequently if at all.” To make sure the retailer’s point of view is taken into account in local politics, Mark Rauschen is involved among others in the board of Osnabrück City Marketing Association and as vice-president of the Chamber of Commerce and Industry for Osnabrück-Emsland-County Bentheim. And on the national scale, he is the President of the Textile Retailers’ Association (BTE) and the industry spokesman. It is no great surprise that Osnabrück’s exemplary entrepreneur has even generated positive headlines in the respected weekly newspaper ‘DIE ZEIT’ with his store concept. It is a blueprint for leading the owner-managed city-centre retail trade into a successful future, while at the same time putting new life into town centres elsewhere that are facing the threat of high vacancy rates and the accompanying squalor.
But let’s go back to the question about what to wear for a meeting with this fashion expert: fortunately, the ‘ZEIT’ also had an article about the ‘quiet luxury trend’, which would appear to be the very latest buzzword in the fashion trade. Actually, what it really means is that it’s trendy to wear clothes that conceal their particular brand, origin and price segment as far as possible. Hopefully, a tailor-made shirt of fine Cassubian linen without a logo will be the right choice for a meeting with Mark Rauschen. In the heat of mid-summer, he receives us wearing a pale suit and T-shirt in casual perfection. “I’ve gone for an Italian look, in keeping with the weather.” That’s true: dressed like this, he could appear in any Nespresso commercial if Brad Pitt doesn’t have the time. So is this in fact his personal favourite outfit? “Well, actually I prefer to wear jeans, a white shirt and sports jacket”, says Rauschen with a laugh. And while we’re talking about private things, did he always want to take over his father’s business? “Yes. After all, I practically grew up here in the store and I’ve always been fascinated by fashion in the retail sector”. It makes sense therefore that after doing his national service with the air force, he took a degree in business engineering with a dissertation entitled “Shopping experience in the retail trade”. As already said, if it looks extremely casual, it’s probably highly professional.
When Mark Rauschen has a bit of free time, which is almost never, then he likes to live out a childhood dream: “I always wanted to be a pilot. But doing my military service with the air force meant I stayed on the ground.” He then took to the skies with a private pilot’s licence and an aircraft at the sport airfield in Osnabrück-Atter that he shares with three friends “although I unfortunately rarely have time to fly”. Instead, Mark Rauschen has his hands firmly on the controls of his company so that his “Airline L&T” continues its heady flight.
Modehaus L&L;T Lengermann & Trieschmann
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