The Mannheim Store

With online shopping being on it's all time high and still rising, a lot of experts say brick and mortar is going to die. Or at least it's gonna change drastically. We are an online shop. We like online shopping. The sheer comfort of sitting on your couch while browsing through stuff you like is pure luxury. But we also do like the experience of discovering new neighborhoods, walking into a store and getting a real life impression of what this is all about. Touching, feeling, trying on the clothes is kind of important, especially when it comes to vintage, where a 90s Medium can fit like todays 3XL. Also a good store has way more to tell, more profile and character, than an online shop can ever have. As we envisioned Double Double more as a brand than an online shop, we've been trying to get our message across and tell a story. Showcasing things we like, emphasizing on stuff that's important to us. And also identifying ourselves through the things we refused to do, stuff we didn't want to sell. But there are certain limits for an online shop. 

With an actual store it's different. You can tell a story through the way your store looks and feels. We always had ideas of how our vintage store should look like. Clothing racks that actually had enough space to browse through easily. Walls filled with 90s collectors items almost like a museum. A space where you can also hang out, read a good book or play old video games with your friends. So when we got the chance to move into the iconic old laundromat in the vibrant Jungbusch Area of Mannheim, we were super stoked to finally be able to turn our vision into reality and actually tell the story we wanted to tell. 

As we got the keys on Sep. 13th, the whole place was quite the mess. We scheduled our opening for Oct. 5th which gave us exactly 3 weeks for getting the whole thing ready and organizing a decent store opening event. The 3 weeks were kinda exhausting to say the least. Luckily we had already gathered a good amount of vintage furniture and tons of memorabilia over the years that was finally going out of their boxes. Toys, Posters, books and all kinds of other crap. Over the years we just bought everything we liked and matched our vibe. We didn't really know why. We just liked collecting nice stuff. But now we know.

One week before the opening we were super stoked to confirm that Berlin-based rapper and one of our long time favorite artits Juju Rogers was coming to perform for our opening. The opening including his performance meant a lot to us. Seeing people understand our vision is what really made this a big milestone for us. Thanks to each and every one that came out and showed love. And thanks to all our friends & family that helped us making this happen!

We've only been here for a month and I'm not saying we made it. Not at all. In fact we can't make a living out of all of this yet. But the fact that we're opening our store every day is kind of surreal for us. Even if our contract is only until the end of January for now. So thanks to everyone who supported us along the way until here. But this is only the beginning. There's tons of things we want to improve, ideas to pursue, projects to bring to reality and more. Hope you're joining us for the ride!