--- title: "HubDay 2025 | Spreat" description: "Paul Kirchbichler at HubDay 2025, hosted by the Digital Hub Logistics and Commerce: from retailer to marketplace, why basics come before AI, and what changes when the goods belong to the brand." url: "https://spreat.com/en/stories/company/hubday-2025" language: "en" --- [Back](https://spreat.com/en/stories?tag=company) - Retail & insights - Company # HubDay 2025 Paul Kirchbichler at HubDay on the point where a store stops owning the goods it sells. 6 November 2025 Translated from German [Read the original version](https://spreat.com/stories/company/hubday-2025) ![The talk's three steps: marketplace, basics, experience](https://spreat.com/media/images/stories/hubday-2025/cover-en-800.webp) On 6 November 2025 the Digital Hub Logistics and Commerce hosted its HubDay. Paul's talk was called “Handeln statt Handeln” - a German pun on trading and taking action, and it carries the whole argument. Retail has been talking about change for years and acting on it far too rarely. He opened with a request to the room: forget everything you think you know about retail. Not optimise it - pour the foundation again. What followed were three steps, in that order, and the order is the actual point. 1. **From retailer to marketplace** Retail has worked the same way since the Phoenicians: the shop buys, the shop sells, the shop carries the risk. Online that stopped being true long ago - buy on a marketplace and you usually buy from a brand, with the platform providing the stage. That is exactly what can be moved onto retail space. 2. **Rails first, then the train** Before anyone shouts “AI”: the fastest train in the world goes nowhere without rails. The rails are clean processes, clean data, simple systems. Simple systems beat complex ones - almost always. 3. **Experience, not just selling** People walk into a shop to touch something, to meet someone, or to have it right now. Once your processes are under control you have time for exactly that again. The store stops being a space with a till next to it and becomes a place where something happens. ## What changes when the store does not own the goods The customer stands in the shop, picks up a product, pays at the till - all as usual. Legally, in that moment, she buys directly from the brand. The store no longer earns a margin between buying and selling but a commission. What falls away is what ties down small retail most: the stock risk and the capital sitting inside it. And with the buying, the bookkeeping goes too - the talk put it at 95 per cent less accounting work for these goods. The talk then moved on to what could follow from that. If the goods belong to the brand, it does not matter which store takes a return - either way the purchase was from the same brand. And the nearest store holding an item can become the logistics point for a same-day delivery. Sales channel and fulfilment channel would then be cleanly separated. Both describe what the principle allows - not what Spreat offers today. It needs enough participating locations first. At that point the talk was explicitly looking ahead. > “Doing is like wanting - only better.” Paul Kirchbichler co-founder, Spreat The ending was personal. Paul founded his first company at sixteen, which German law does not really provide for - and spent half a year arguing about it before the Hamburg family court. The point he drew from it: do not wait for permission, and do not wait for the perfect moment. A child learning to walk falls over, and nobody forbids it. Written by [Paul Kirchbichleron LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/paul-kirchbichler/) Co-founder and managing director Share this article ## More stories - [![Weeks instead of months into physical retail, and what a brand's risk really costs](https://spreat.com/media/images/stories/schnellster-weg-in-den-einzelhandel/cover-en-800.webp) - Retail & insights - Product ## The fastest route into physical retail - and what it really costs a brand With Spreat, the brand carries the stock risk. That is true. But how big it is can be put in euros - and set against the routes where the retailer takes on the risk and gets paid for it. Read the story](https://spreat.com/en/stories/industry/fastest-route-into-retail) - [![Four steps instead of buying stock: how much work the brands' goods take in a store](https://spreat.com/media/images/stories/aufwand-fremde-ware-im-store/cover-en-800.webp) - Retail & insights - Product ## How much work the brands' goods take in a store Space, staff time, return shipping: the brands' goods do not come for free. Here is what a store really does for them - and which work falls away in return. Read the story](https://spreat.com/en/stories/industry/work-brand-goods-in-store) - [![Eight questions from Reddit and forums on consignment, commission and stock without buying it](https://spreat.com/media/images/stories/reddit-fragen-kommission-marktplatz-store/cover-en-800.webp) - Retail & insights ## The marketplace in the store: what retailers and brands ask on Reddit and in forums Eight questions about consignment, commission and stock without buying it, as they appear on Reddit, in German seller forums and on gutefrage - with the community's answers and what Spreat made of them. Read the story](https://spreat.com/en/stories/industry/reddit-questions-consignment-in-store-marketplace) ## And how about you? Store or brand - the way in is a different one. Tell us which side you are coming from. [I have a store](https://spreat.com/en/stores) [I have a brand](https://spreat.com/en/brands)