KNV Zeitfracht's MENSCH group is growing rapidly - already over 340 members

Stuttgart, September 18, 2020.

The growth of KNV Zeitfracht's association group, the MENSCH book trade cooperation, has gathered pace. Although it was only founded last year, it already has more than 340 member bookstores. Its concept consistently focuses on the bookstores' customers. The aim is to increase customer frequency, sales and thus the profitability and liquidity of bookshops. More and more booksellers are joining the concept.

KNV Zeitfracht created the group to offer booksellers solutions to the biggest challenges: By countering the increasing economic pressure and withstanding the decline in customer frequency, bookstores are securing their future viability. "We see a lot of untapped potential in bookstores, especially in the areas of purchasing, product range strategy and design, communication and e-commerce," says Marcus Vogel, Head of the bookstore cooperation MENSCH. The KNV Zeitfracht team has enlisted support from the retail sector and gained three experienced booksellers as advisory board members: Martina Taube (Buchhandlung Taube, Brackenheim), Joachim Becker (Buchhandlung Stojan, Ahrensburg) and Markus Renk (Wagner'sche, Innsbruck).

The member bookstores from Germany, Austria and South Tyrol have access to a portfolio of services in the areas of purchasing, category management and community. Vogel sees a bookstore's purchasing department as the key lever for achieving greater profitability and liquidity. "During the difficult lockdown period due to the coronavirus pandemic in spring, we all experienced very impressively how important liquidity is. Professional liquidity planning is therefore a central component of our offering. In combination with flexible and demand-oriented purchasing, bookstores can achieve lean inventories while increasing sales at the same time," reports Vogel.

Category management is at the heart of MENSCH. It ensures an attractive and constantly changing range of non-fiction and how-to books in the member bookstores. The bookstores use themes and promotions to increase their customer frequency and exploit sales opportunities - even with previously unknown titles and publishers. The selection of titles is consistently geared towards the customer's perspective. "MENSCH members can order over 3,500 titles on attractive topics from category management from one copy overnight at top conditions," says Vogel. The buying group also supports the bookshops with comprehensive advertising for the campaign topics. The MENSCH team does a lot of work for the bookshops and ensures, for example, that the promotional titles are integrated into the newsletters and online stores.

The MENSCH community is the third component of the buying group. In addition to personal support from the MENSCH team at KNV Zeitfracht and the three advisory boards, members network via the digital communication platform Yammer.