When online retailing came to the island

My gaze wanders from the Frisian tea over to the postcards and on to the robust all-weather clothing for unprepared tourists. Just one establishment further on, there is the typical selection of blue and white striped North Sea outfits and colourful beach toys. You know the type - the North Sea island version of a corner shop. These two shops in Wyk, the only town on the North Sea island of Föhr, are emblematic of the little shopping streets on this island of 4,000 inhabitants. A lap around this little town evokes the feeling of a voyage into the past.

Romantic resort or shopping wasteland?

For a city-dweller who will otherwise work their way enthusiastically through the shoe shops and fashion stores of Hamburg’s Mönckebergstraße, it is an unusual sight. Shoppers can scour the island for the huge fashion retailers and chains known all over Germany, but to no avail. As a holiday-maker and tourist on the island, for me that’s a romantic part of the slowdown experience. But what do the actual islanders think of it?

Johanna Ricklefs grew up on the neighbouring island of Amrum and is unequivocal on the matter. ‘All I can say is... the North Sea stripes look! The boutiques and fashion stores on the island are often tailored towards holiday-makers and don’t really have the locals on their radar.’

It’s a match - more parcels for the islanders

Perhaps I’m wrong, but you’d think North Sea islanders would be particularly fond of delving into the digital world to do their shopping. Two or three phone calls with the courier service Hermes fill me in on the details - in the last year alone, Hermes delivered almost 240,000 parcels on Föhr, Amrum and Sylt. That’s an increase of 12 per cent in comparison with the previous year. A rising trend, you might say. Online retail and island inhabitants seems to be a match made in heaven.

‘When I look at my friends and acquaintances on Amrum, the number of online orders they place has grown a lot in no time at all. Some families receive two, three, even four parcels a week’ estimates Johanna, who works at the sorting office for the island neighbourhood. This figure appears not to be too far from the reality. On the popular holiday island of Föhr alone, Hermes delivers almost two packages to every resident per month. And then there are the deliveries by other couriers to take into account. Admittedly, in Flensburg - the nearest large town on the mainland - the number of deliveries made by Hermes is much higher, at around five parcels per head each month, but there is still a detectable rising trend.

A crammed car and a milk carton in the lap

Flensburg is a good catchword. The town was for a long time THE shopping destination for families and islanders in general, Johanna reveals to me. Granted, it’s hardly a shopping metropolis, but it’s tantamount to a quantum leap in comparison with the village shopping arcades and rows of shops on the islands. Looking back, Johanna can’t refrain from laughing. ‘Back in the day, before online retailing, we used to go on proper power shopping trips to the mainland. The car would end up packed right up to the roof and we would drive back to the ferry at the end of the day with a carton of milk sitting in our laps.’

Nowadays the native of Amrum lives in Hamburg and, thanks to new shopping opportunities, can shop for things for her parents on Amrum or at least give them a helping hand online.

In the end, we have to admit that Frisian tea, striped outfits and the North Sea corner shop atmosphere have a certain charm to them. Isn’t this charm something the digital world of shopping could harness too...!?