End of July I visited Staedtler Welt, Staedtler’s shop in the centre of Nuremberg.
The weather on the day was great, around 35°C (~95°F), and I even passed Staedtler’s headquarters when I drove into Nuremberg. This was because my wife, I and two friends went to Herzogenaurach first, the city where Adidas and Puma are from, and when you drive from there to the centre of Nuremberg on the Bundesstraße (B road / national highway) you pass Staedtler’s headquarters, a nice surprise and something I didn’t know or expect.
Staedtler Welt opened in November 2010 and offers a great selection of Staedtler products – obviously the best I have seen so far in a shop, but I was slightly disappointed because there were many current Staedtler products I am aware of that I couldn’t find in this shop. To be honest I was expecting to see more products, but nevertheless, the products available include some items you don’t usually see in shops, like the Mars rasor and even products that are not made any more, like the Mars stenofix.
Most of the space in the shop is used to display stationery, but there is also an area in the back of the shop dedicated to FIMO and related products, like FIMO accessories. In this part of the shop you can even find ovens and an area that is probably being used for FIMO workshops.
The employees were extremely friendly. One of the employees is originally from the UK and started to talk to our British friends who went there with me and my wife. The prices in the shop were similar to what you would pay on the high street or in a typical department store.
Wopex and the trend line colours are also on display in the shop. These trend line colours, many are different shades of brown, were first released about a year ago. I thought that they were originally colours exclusive to the Wopex range, but I couldn’t find any evidence for this. In any case, you can now find non-Wopex products in trend line colours, too. When they were first released the trend line products were only available in the Staedtler Welt shop, but during my trip to Germany this July I saw trend line products in department stores, too.
I would like to thank Vernon Antcliff for letting me know his camera when we were in Staedtler Welt.
Thank you for your report! It looks like a place worth visiting, despite the points of criticism. – Yes, the Stenofix is still being sold but no longer produced. – The mouse pad looks a little silly to me but this probably means that I don’t belong to the target group 😉 – By the way, I like the “doesn’t break” graphic in the fifth image.
Gunther, thank you for your comment.
I hope my blog post didn’t sound too critical, as I really enjoyed my visit to Staedtler Welt. I haven’t looked recently, but a few months ago you could get the stenofix much cheaper online.
I do like the mouse pad and the idea of a mouse pad for their anniversary. It was well made, too, but I would like it much more if it wasn’t a photo of a hand holding a Noris, but if it was only the Noris – or some old drawings from an old Staedtler catalogue – I might have even bought it if that was the case….
The “doesn’t break” graphic is really nice. I don’t know much about graphic design, so I hope I don’t say something stupid now, and had to look the names of these two designers up again, as I keep forgetting them, but it looks like something Otl Aicher (or Eduard Ege) might have done if they were still around.
It breaks my heart to hear that the Stenofix has been discontinued. It is my favorite Staedtler of all.
Great photos and post, Memm. I’m not sure what I would have done had I accidentally discovered a shop like this. I think my whole body would start vibrating, and that it would be hard to walk normally…but I’m sure I’d find my way in. 🙂
I’m with Sean. I think I’d still find myself unable to exit the store, too. 🙂
Adair, there is still stock around, so you can still buy this pencil… Last chance…
Sean and John, the shop was really great, but they could have improved it by offering more of the more exotic products. Most of the items are available in normal shops, but it’s still nice to have it all in one place.
On a different note, I noticed that our local Waitrose got rid of their Faber-Castell pencils and that they are now selling Staedtler Noris pencils instead. They only have one type of branded pencil anyway, sold in a blister pack between lots of Japanese ball point pens – and I doubt that they sell a lot pencils …but it’s still interesting to see that Staedtler seems to get back into supermarkets after what feels like having lost a lot of shelf space in supermarkets in the last years.
Great shop looks like. Thanks for the report!
Staedtlers in the grocery store? Mine doesn’t have any wooden pencils at all, just lots of mechanicals (and a pretty nice aisle at that). When I lived in Southern Illinois, we had a great market that carried great pencils, like the different offerings from Dixon, etc.
Waitrose is more of a super market, not so much ‘only’ a grocery store. Most of the ones in the UK and Germany sell stationery, but I would say that over the past years the choice available has become more and more boring and the number of products that are expensive, of mediocre quality, but have some sort of design element to them to justify the high price, has increased.
There’s an aisle for stationery, including mechanical pencils, but there are no wooden pencils? That’s rather sad. Are the mechanical pencils they sell exciting?
Not in the least, Matthias, just cheap school models. It’s funny that one can buy Italian water, bananas from far away, local milk and everythinggoodfree cupcake mix in such a big store — but no wooden pencils. It’s sad to think of. (now I sound melodramatic)
That will be on my list of places to visit, if I ever make it there! Thank you for a lovely report.
John, that’s really a reason to be sad…. I wonder whether there’s no demand, but I doubt that – so the explanation might be that people prefer to get their wooden pencils from somewhere else… In American TV shows you see pencil regularly, assuming that’s at least partially representative of reality there should be some demand…
Shangching, Nuremberg is really nice!