
7 years of OU - time for a review
7 years of OU. That's a long time, isn't it? Time to take a look back.
It all started with an idea that is even older. The idea of a supermarket without packaging. The beautiful Wiener Straße 16 was founded almost exactly 7 years ago. The first unpackaged store in Berlin. In a world where neither zero waste nor unpackaged are big. Many people gave Milena the finger: "Without packaging? How is that supposed to work?" Spoiler: It works.
The store opened and the concept worked. Of course, there were a few initial difficulties. However, we were able to settle in well and now we, as well as our dear regular customers, can no longer imagine Kreuzberg without Original Unverpackt.
Two years after we were founded, we wanted to expand so that we could make zero waste possible for everyone. Not just for people who live in hip areas. In 2016, we added our online shop. We also thought about what we could do to make not only the products but also the whole concept environmentally friendly. Second-hand packaging and plastic-free, climate-neutral shipping were the answer. At the beginning, we felt like we were still sending all the packages ourselves from the office. We are now in our second warehouse in the south of Berlin and the whole thing looks a bit more professional.
We would have liked to open more stores straight away, but we realized that it wasn't possible at the moment. That's why we decided to help other people who are interested in unpackaged stores to open and we created an online course.
In 2018, Milena became a parent and things quieted down a bit at OU for a while. But we managed that quite well. As soon as Milena was back, we continued with the opening of our second store: the beloved Großbeere. Shortly afterwards, however, Coroni came around the corner quite unexpectedly and turned a lot of things upside down for us. Home office, shortened opening hours, a limited number of people in the store - you know how it is. Definitely a challenging time for a small company. Unfortunately, we had to close our second store after a year. What has remained, however, is our delivery service. Started on Großbeerenstraße, briefly relocated to our own property, it is now operated from Wiener Straße. As almost always at OU, we found a new use for the premises in no time and are now sitting in our own office for the first time.
This week we celebrate our birthday and are incredibly proud of what we have already achieved. And of course we are looking forward to everything that is still to come - because, as always, we have a lot planned.
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