About Stores+Shops

Stores+Shops

Stores+Shops (styled stores+shops) is the trade magazine of the EHI Retail Institute of Cologne, published for investment decision-makers in retail. Launched in 2001 alongside the sister title retail technology, it appears online and in print on special topics, with concept, design, and technology themes forming its editorial focus. Its content draws exclusively on the EHI's research areas and directly on the headquarters of retail companies, and it includes numerous practical examples from renowned retailers, making it the research institute's own media brand for the trade and a fixture of German retail publishing for more than two decades. The EHI's media data present the magazine as the ideal environment for advertisers addressing retail decision-makers, with the institute's events, studies, and databases providing additional communication channels around the magazine.

Overview

Stores+Shops is published by the EHI Retail Institute GmbH, Spichernstr. 55, 50672 Köln. The magazine's concept is the investment decision in retail: it informs executives and department heads about store concepts, store design, and retail technology, with exclusive results from EHI research and case studies from retail headquarters. The EHI's own description promises high-quality and unique content on the industry's specialist topics, exclusively from its research areas or directly from retail headquarters, with concept, design, and technology topics forming the focus. The format is online plus print on special topics; the website stores-shops.de is the joint online portal of the trade magazines stores+shops and stores+shops technology, carrying the editorial content, whitepapers, and product news for the investment-decision audience. The target group is everyone who decides on investments in retail: managing directors and the heads of construction, technology, gastronomy and furnishings, information, communication and security technology, e-commerce, and logistics, as well as technical purchasing and the marketing departments of large retail companies in the German-speaking world, a precisely defined B2B audience that gives the magazine its advertising value.

The readership extends to online retailers, operators of online shopping platforms, wholesalers, hardware and software companies, IT service providers, and the exhibitors of the international trade fairs EuroShop and EuroCIS, the world's largest fair for retail investment goods and Europe's most important fair for retail technology. EHI members receive the magazine free of charge as part of their membership, which also includes access to the institute's knowledge pool, studies, and the handelsdaten.de statistics portal. The publishing management is Olaf Hohmann, a member of the EHI management board; partner management and sales are handled by Maren Franken and Anna-Isabell Eikermann. The EHI's motto, "Gemeinsam besser handeln" (trading better together), expresses the institute's community philosophy: with its knowledge and its community, it shapes the future of retail, and the magazine is one of the channels through which that knowledge circulates.

History

Stores+Shops was launched in 2001 as part of the EHI's media expansion, alongside the specialist journal retail technology. The EHI itself looks back on a long history: founded in 1951 as the RGH (Rationalisierungs-Gemeinschaft des Handels), it founded the Institute for Self-Service in 1957, merged with the ISB in 1989 to form the DHI, was renamed EHI (EuroHandelsinstitut) in 1993 and EHI Retail Institute in 2006, and today operates with subsidiaries including the Agraya standards portfolio and the H.U.T. hotel and conference management company. The institute founded the EuroShop trade fair in partnership with Messe Düsseldorf in 1966, the EuroCIS retail technology fair in 1997, and developed the barcode in Germany, leading to today's GS1 Germany; it also launched the handelsdaten.de statistics database in 2010, the EHI Foundation in 2013, and the EHI LAB in 2021.

Within this institutional history, stores+shops became the magazine that reports on new openings and successful examples in design, strategy, and technology topics, grounded in the institute's empirical research. The 2019 media data for stores+shops technology document the magazine's established B2B advertising model, with the website addressing the same investment-decision audience of managing directors, construction and technology heads, and technical purchasers. In 2026, the EHI celebrated 75 years of the institute, with stores+shops as its established trade media brand.

Coverage and Content

Stores+Shops covers concept, design, and technology themes for retail: new store openings, successful examples of design, strategy, and technology, exclusive results from EHI research work, whitepapers from the industry, and product news. The magazine's content comes exclusively from the EHI's research areas or directly from retail headquarters, giving it a unique position: it is not a general retail news magazine but the research institute's own publication, with access to data and case studies no other magazine has, and its direct line to retail headquarters gives it practitioner voices other publications must interview from outside. The EHI's principle, "from retail for retail," applies to the magazine as well: it reports on new openings and successful examples in design, strategy, and technology topics, grounded in the institute's empirical research across 15 research areas.

The online portal carries whitepapers and product news from the industry alongside the editorial content. The print editions on special topics allow deep dives into focused themes, and the magazine's "Blick ins Heft" preview gives readers a look inside each issue. The magazine complements the EHI's other knowledge products: the handelsdaten.de statistics database, which evaluates the institute's own retail research alongside some 150 third-party sources, the service provider directory with over 100 categories, the EHI's studies from 15 research areas and its numerous events each year, and the EuroShop and EuroCIS trade fairs, whose exhibitors also form part of the magazine's readership.

Organization and Ownership

Stores+Shops is published by the EHI Retail Institute GmbH, Spichernstr. 55, 50672 Köln. The EHI is a research, education, and consulting institute for retail and its partners, with a network of around 800 member companies from retail and the consumer and capital goods industries. Its services include specialist publications and congresses, databases and seals of approval, and numerous topic-specific committees, and its milestones include the barcode development that led to GS1 Germany, the KUNO card-payment fraud prevention system, and the EHI Geprüfter Online-Shop seal first awarded in 1999. The publishing management is Olaf Hohmann (hohmann@ehi.org), a member of the EHI management board; sales and partner management are handled by Maren Franken and Anna-Isabell Eikermann. The online editorial office contact was Katharina Sieweke. Financial details of the magazine are not publicly confirmed.

Digital Presence

Stores-shops.de is the magazine's online portal, presenting the editorial content, whitepapers, and product news, with a look inside the current issue and the media data for advertisers. The EHI's main site ehi.org presents the magazine as part of the EHI world alongside the online-shop seal, the trade data portal, EuroShop, and EuroCIS. Newsletters and online advertising formats extend the magazine's digital business, and the media data position the magazine and its online offerings as the ideal environment for communication with retail decision-makers. Social media activity runs through the EHI's channels.

The Retail Institute's Magazine

Stores+Shops is the EHI Retail Institute's own voice in retail media: a trade magazine for investment decisions that draws on the institute's research and its network of 800 member companies. From store concept to retail technology, it documents how German-speaking retail builds, designs, and digitizes its stores, and its exclusive access to the institute's empirical research gives it an authority no general retail publication can match, sustaining its role into the era of AI-assisted retail.